CARS2006 spans the southern 2/3 of the worlds oceans, from 70S to 26N, except in the Atlantic where is reaches only to10N. The six water properties mapped in are temperature (deg C), salinity (PSU), oxygen (ml/litre), nitrate (micromole/litre), silicate (micromole/litre), phosphate (micromole/litre). It comprises historic mean fields and average seasonal cycles, derived from all available historical subsurface ocean property measurements (primarily research vessel instrument casts and autonomous profiling buoys). The mean refers to the long-term average of salinity in the bottom water at each location. This dataset is a contribution to the CERF Marine Biodiversity Hub.