Planktonic, benthic and sympagic copepods collected from the desalination unit of Mario Zucchelli Research Station in Terra Nova Bay (Ross Sea, Antarctica).

We describe the diversity of marine copepods Terra Nova Bay sampled by the filters installed in the desalination unit (DU) of the Italian research station "Mario Zucchelli" described in recent work. The opening of the intake pipe of the DU is positioned at a depth of 4 m and allowed a total of 2,116 specimens to be sampled and recognised. In addition, new occurrence records of copepod genera and species are reported in the same zone. We provide an overview of the marine copepod diversity reported for TNB. The total of 2,116 individuals corresponds to 14 genera and 15 species and is represented by 136 occurrence records in this dataset. Around 52% of the total number of species are new records for the TNB area. The publication of this data paper was funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO, contract n°FR/36/AN1/AntaBIS) in the Framework of EU-Lifewatch as a contribution to the SCAR Antarctic biodiversity portal (biodiversity.aq).