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

Liz Dobbins (rapporteur), Ned Cokelet, Al Hermann, Carol Ladd, Allen Macklin, Jeff Napp, Jim Overland, Ron Reed, Phyllis Stabeno

• SEBSCC Indices Working Group (Seattle members) will meet Friday, 9/14, at 10 a.m. in the Cloud Chamber.  Assignments from the June meeting will be reviewed, and resources will be evaluated.

 
• SEBSCC Pribilof Islands Working Group, headed by Gordie Swartzman, will meet at PMEL on Thursday and Friday, 9/20-21.  Thursday's meeting will begin in the Oceanographer Room (3/2104) at 9:30 a.m..  Friday's meeting will begin in the Cloud Chamber (3/2065) at 9:00 a.m.

• Beth Turner, NOAA/COP, reminded SEBSCC Phase III researchers that annual reports are due later this fall.

• Expect a call for papers for the First International Symposium and Workshop on an Integrated Assessment for a Sustainable Bering Sea sponsored by the US Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee.  The meeting will be in Anchorage, AK, from April 23-24, 2002, with a 1-day workshop following.  Attendance at the symposium will be limited to about 200 scientists.  Allen has a draft announcement available.  The symposium will be part of a larger Bering Sea Summit for all Bering Sea stake holders.

• The US Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee has identified the Bering Sea (and the Chukchi, Arctic, and northern Gulf of Alaska) as the target of a study that includes diverse aspects such as health, tourism, science, etc.  This study could be a source of funds for ongoing research.

• HX-247 and HX-249: GLOBEC process studies and Bering summertime plankton - Jeff Napp


The GLOBEC process cruise on the Alpha Helix was for 18 days in July.  Sample locations were in clusters around 3 GAK stations (the 1st in the ACC, GAK6 and GAK10) and 1 station in Prince William Sound to form a pseudo mesoscale-study.  There were also CTD stations done in support of LTOP along the GAK and Fairfield lines, and in Hinchinbrook Entrance.  The GAK line stations were done over 9-10 days. Preliminary analysis of plant growth shows nutrient limitation at the inner GAK stations, and no nutrient limitation at the outer station and in Prince William Sound.  Lew Halderson found that juvenile pink salmon were not on the shelf yet.

The object of the August 14- September 2 Alpha Helix Bering Sea cruise was to sample nutrient cycling and lower trophic level conditions in the white waters of a coccolithophorid bloom.  However, the bloom was not very intense, was earlier, or was north near Nunivak Island.  Near mooring site 4, cruise scientists detected a patch of growing coccolithophores that hadn't yet reached bloom numbers.  The sampling they did there might help define pre-bloom conditions.  During the cruise, storms were frequent (every 3-5 days) and large (covering the whole Bering Sea).

• GP-01-01: GLOBEC juvenile salmon distribution cruise - Ned Cokelet


This cruise aboard the Great Pacific was from Yakutat to Seward, July 12-28, and the next leg continued on past Kodiak Island.  The numbers of juvenile fish were lower than expected, but there were abundant adult salmon.  The number of zooplankton caught by a near-surface towed tucker net was also lower than expected.
 

• General field conditions:  This summer, storms have not been present in the northern Gulf of Alaska, but have been tracking into the Bering Sea instead.  Flow into Kennedy and Stevens Entrances and into Shelikof Strait has been minimal.  Of 40 drifters to reach the entrance, only 2 actually entered; the rest hung about Portlock Bank for awhile (1 for 80 days), then traversed the gulf side of Kodiak Island.


Variability near the GAK line is very high.  CTD profiles from the same location, but taken 4 hours apart, are very different.  Currents may be as high as 50 cm/s.  There is significant onshore flow at the GAK line, so that at times, flow is parallel to it.  Correlation scales may be as low as 4-5 km (from drifters and biology) in the spring and summer.  Because the planned mesoscale studies are based on 20-30 km correlation scales, this could be very significant.
 

• Preparations for 2002 field season - Allen Macklin


The 2002 field season will not as ambitious as this year's, as there are no GLOBEC process studies planned.  All FOCI Project Description Forms for 2002 ship time have been received.  Schedules are being developed.  FOCI is still uncertain what ships will be supporting its programs besides the Miller Freeman.

• The North Pacific Marine Research Program is expected to announce a second round of opportunity for research.  The announcement likely will be made following the NPMR PI meeting October 30-November 1.  Some proposals may be prefunded  to enable monitoring to continue uninterruptedly.

• Al Hermann reports that physical modeling is progressing with support from GLOBEC.  A model with 10-km resolution of an area from Southern California to the Bering Sea is currently running on the massively parallel computer at FSL in Boulder.  A model of lower resolution of the whole North Pacific will soon be run to provide boundary conditions for the 10-km resolution model.  A third model with 2.5-km resolution will be run for smaller areas.  The resolution of this third model might have to be increased based on the mooring correlations near GAK.  Also, a 3D version of Sarah Hinckley's NPZ model is also now running.

Because of the PICES meeting, the October FOCI PI meeting is canceled.  The next meeting will be November 8, 2001, in the AFSC Director's Conference Room (4/2143). 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.