U.S. Department of Commerce / NOAA	/ OAR /  PMEL  / OERD\  \ NMFS / AFSC / RACE/	FOCI
	Fisheries-Oceanography Coordinated Investigations

Carrie Hadden, Al Hermann, Allen Macklin, Ann Matarese, Jeff Napp, Jim Overland, Ron Reed, Phyllis Stabeno, Debbie Blood (rapporteur)

• Bering Sea special issue (http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/sebscc/special_issue/) of Deep-Sea Research Part II - The editors have received 23 manuscripts, two of which already have been accepted for publication. All others are currently being reviewed by peers.  Allen Macklin has produced a secure virtual issue, accessible from the web site, for authors, editors, and publishers to view during the revision stage.  This virtual issue will enable authors to familiarize themselves with and reference other papers in the issue and facilitate production of the actual issue.

• SEBSCC Annual PI Meeting: The first synthesis-phase meeting of Southeast Bering Sea Carrying Capacity will be held on January 29-30, 2001, in PMEL's Oceanographer Room (Building 3, Room 2104). A draft agenda has been distributed to 25 participants.

• Personnel update:  Following Art Kendall's retirement, Jeff Napp was named as acting task leader for NMFS FOCI for a period of 90 days. After this 90-day period, Kevin Bailey will be the acting task leader for the subsequent 90 days. It is expected that Art's position will be filled at the end of the 6 month period.  AFSC is still seeking replacements for Lisa Rugen and Ric Brodeur.  PMEL is evaluating two candidates for a post-doctoral position.  It could be filled by February 2001.

• Al Hermann reported that the spatial domain and resolution of his GLOBEC model has increased from a 13-  to 22-km grid in the Gulf of Alaska to a 10-km grid covering much of the North Pacific and Bering Sea.

• There will be a half-day symposium on the Bering Sea ecosystem at the 10th Anniversary PICES meeting in Victoria, October 2001.  Oral and poster presentations will be accepted.  The proceedings from this symposium will be published in Progress in Oceanography.

2001 FIELD SEASON

• Steller sea lion research  -  NOAA has been awarded funds to study the ecosystem of Steller sea lions, an endangered marine mammal species whose habitat is the coastal areas of the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands and Gulf of Alaska.  Phyllis Stabeno outlined a physical proposal that will be submitted next week to the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research.  The proposal recommends research on three scales relating to climate and Steller sea lions.  The first is broad-scale climate research in the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea using moorings and Palace floats to examine how the ocean responds to decadal-scale climate forcing.  Regional scale research will examine the strength of the subarctic gyre and the Alaskan Stream using moorings and satellite-tracked drifters. There is historical data to the early 1990's to examine how particular environments change with time.  On the local scale, research will examine processes in the Aleutian Island sea lion rookeries, particularly the flow through the passes and how it varies with climate change. This will encompass modeling and retrospective analysis but will also entail adding moorings in bays. This work will be tied in with a sea lion tagging study to discover what sea lions do when a favorite prey item, Atka mackerel, is depleted from an area.

Biological studies proposed are geared toward specific projects of more narrow scope than the physical proposals to be undertaken and will largely be completed this fiscal year:  Proposals would

1) Conduct a conference on regime shifts to gather together people both within and outside of NOAA.

2) Conduct a frontal study of forage fish (pollock, eulachon, capelin). During climate change will these fish show fidelity to the fronts? This work will build on the Pribilof Island studies.

3) Investigate migration of age-0 pollock. Whereas pollock larvae drift downstream from Shelikof Strait, the age-0s seem to come back upstream later in a counter migration.

4) Acquire additional gear to study pollock and their prey.

5) Continue Miriam Doyle's GLOBEC work on a retrospective analysis of forage fish and look at interannual comparisons of such.

6) Conduct long-term ichthyoplankton sampling into summer and fall during which time many forage fish spawn. Sampling would be piggybacked onto the summer Great Pacific cruise and fall juvenile cruise. This sampling data would be compared to data collected during the 1970s.

FOCI scientists agreed that the proposals would be stronger if physical and biological aspects were integrated.

• SEARCH (Study of Environmental Arctic Change) - This multi-agency planning activity aims at understanding changes in the Arctic related to atmospheric changes such as the Polar vortex, change in sea level, ice cover, etc. This is a large initiative expected to commence in 2003. Research requests will cover spatial and decadal scales of multivariate processes, with sustained observations, including application of paleodata to extend observations backward through time. Presently FOCI is helping to write NOAA's section on pilot biological ocean observations.  The plan is to continue and augment observing capabilities in the southeastern Bering Sea, and translate them as possible northward toward Bering Strait, the Chukchi Sea, and North Slope.  Observations extend from the physical environment to lower and upper trophic levels.

The next FOCI PI meeting will be at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 8 February 2001, in the Cloud Chamber (3/2065). Please submit to Allen Macklin, no later than the day before the meeting, agenda items and fax-ready copies of figures or handouts that you intend to present at the meeting. Alternately, presentation materials may be posted on the WWW or e-mailed to remote participants before the meeting.

Mail corrections and addenda to the FOCI Coordinator.