U.S. Department of Commerce / NOAA / OAR / ERL / PMEL / FOCI
	Fisheries-Oceanography Coordinated Investigations

 

Kevin Bailey, Rick Brodeur, Ned Cokelet, Steve Hammond, Al Hermann, Mark Koehn, Mike Lemon, Allen Macklin,  Jeff Napp, Jim Overland, Ron Reed, Phyllis Stabeno, Beth Sinclair, Cindy Tynan, Kathy Mier (rapporteur)

• The Press Release on the FOCI International Workshop on Recent Conditions in the Bering Sea that took place in November will be published this month.  A summary of the workshop will  be published as an ERL Special Report that will also be available on the web.  The printed version will be sent to all invitees and attendees.

• Jim Overland commented on SEBSCC Phase II awards.  One proposal was received in response to the Federal Register announcement.  It has been peer reviewed, and the Project Management Team is meeting on Friday, December 4 to make final recommendations on funding.  Results should be announced by December 11.

• A meeting for finalizing field plans will be held on Thursday, December 17.

• The UNOLS vessel  Thompson will sail in mid January for the first 1999 FOCI cruise.  Bill Parker is chief scientist and should be contacted for shipping or operations.

• Phyllis Stabeno reported that all moorings deployed in 1998 were recovered on the October Sir Wilfrid Laurier cruise.  Some Gulf of Alaska data were unusable due to fouling of instruments by extreme biological productivity in Shelikof Strait.

• Steve Hammond gave a brief report on the OAR/NMFS retreat in La Jolla in October.  The purpose of the meeting was to talk about ways OAR and NMFS can expand their collaborations.  David Evans, the new OAR Assistant Administrator, gave a favorable impression by emphasizing the need for more science and long-term plans in NOAA.  The agenda consisted of stock assessment, habitats, fisheries/oceanography, and advanced sampling plans.

Phyllis Stabeno discussed the ongoing physical state of the eastern Bering Sea.  Last year was very warm in the Bering Sea.  Ice is beginning to form in the Bering Sea this year similar to last year.  The last few weeks show that sea surface temperature has been fairly cold, but still warmer than usual, indicating a 2-3 degree C warm anomaly.  There is still a lot of heat on the shelf, and there is no ice at the Pribilofs right now.  If this is a light to moderate ice year, it may be possible to work north of the Pribilofs in February.  Contact Bill Parker if you have operational requests.  We are not sure about the state of the coccolithophore patch because it has been too cloudy to observe SeaWiFS images.  Ice maps and sea surface temperature maps are available on the web at: http://www.alaska.net/~nwsar/html/ice/ice_marine.html.

Kevin Bailey raised the question of whether or not we should continue with the late May cruise to survey larval pollock abundance in the Shelikof Strait region.   He talked about some of the factors.  In our larval estimation, we adjust for size-dependent mortality and time of survey, but this adjustment takes two years to bring about, so adjusted values are not available for FOCI's recruitment prediction that occurs about two months after the cruise.  A digital camera could be used at sea to record length frequencies, so that adjustments could be made sooner.

According to data for the last 15 years, this adjustment makes a big difference, especially in 1981, where the unadjusted abundance was 4-5 times greater than the adjusted abundance.  These adjusted numbers are used in life table analyses where a  mean mortality rate and coefficient of variation is calculated across years for each stage.  These analyses are used to see if  juvenile and early larval mortality can explain much of the variance in recruitment from 1980-1993.  Larval numbers lower than 1 standard deviation from the mean have always resulted in poor recruitment.  High recruitment generally comes from years of moderate abundance.

Kevin discussed the effect of different ocean current speeds on sampling schemes, and how we may be underestimating patch size.  It was suggested that a sea-going circulation model be used, and that FOCI investigate adaptive sampling strategies.

Beth Sinclair mentioned that NMML will conduct Steller sea lion work off the Fish and Wildlife Service vessel Tiglax during February, March, and July along the western Aleutians for the next three years.  It may be possible for FOCI to piggyback if we would like to extend some of our sampling efforts, particularly near shore (i.e., larval surveys).

The next FOCI PI meeting will be held at 10 a.m., Thursday, January 14, 1999, in the Cloud Chamber (3/2065).  Please submit to Allen Macklin, no later than the day before the meeting, fax-ready copies of figures that you intend to present.

Mail corrections and addenda to the FOCI Coordinator.