Hydrocarbon concentration, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry characterization, mass-to-charge ratio and monoisotopic intensity, short-lived radioisotope, benthic infauna, sediment texture and composition data collected aboard R/V Justo Sierra cruise JS-0815 in the southern Gulf of Mexico from 2015-07-31 to 2015-08-08 (NCEI Accession 0226973)

This dataset contains the concentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAHs) and biomarkers (hopanes, steranes, alkanes) in marine sediment cores using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) and monoisotopic intensity data using a Fourier transform ion cyclotron mass spectrometry (FTICR-MS), sediment texture and composition data, short-lived radioisotope (SLRad) data, and species-level benthic foraminiferal assemblages identified from sediment cores collected aboard R/V Justo Sierra cruise JS-0815 in the southern Gulf of Mexico between 2015-07-31 and 2015-08-08.

Marine sediment core samples were collected with multiple corers and were sectioned at specific intervals, and freeze-dried. Hydrocarbons were extracted from freeze-dried samples using a dichloromethane/methanol (9:1) mixture of solvents and extracts were analyzed using an Agilent 7890B GC/MS instrument attached to a 5977A mass detector. Benthic infauna data includes average meiofauna and macrofauna taxa abundance per replicate-section; calculations for infauna abundance, diversity, richness and evenness; and the total concentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAHs) for the core sections.