Dataset collected during two field campaigns in the same Antarctic fast ice site (Cape Evans, November/December 2018-19) as part of the AGP and NZARI collaboration over the grant "On Thin Ice: An in situ surveillance system for sea-ice microbial communities". The fieldwork was designed to test the scientific potentials of the IMAS/AGP developed under-ice HI system for mapping temporally dynamic and spatially varying under-ice habitats. The dataset consists of 3 terabytes of HI data acquired both in-situ under a wide range of natural and manipulated light conditions, as well as ex-situ with data acquired using a newly developed ice core scanning approach. The in-situ data are in the form of scanned transects acquired with a HI system capturing transmitted natural sunlight while being deployed beneath sea-ice. The ex-situ data was collected using external light sources illuminating horizontal and vertical sections of extracted ice cores. The dataset includes auxiliary data such as RGB imagery, TriOS RAMSES under-ice irradiance, sky irradiance, and any other measurements or information required to process the data.

Other auxiliary data collected include filtered samples of ice core sections for fluorometric Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) extraction, pigment composition via HPLC (to be processed), and particulate absorption spectra. Media footage (e.g., under-ice ROV videography, under-ice 360 videos, campaign photography of the systems and science) is also included.