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

Jeff Napp, Phyllis Stabeno, Ann Matarese, Matt Wilson, Sarah Hinckley, Ron Reed, Bern Megrey, Carrie Hadden, Annette Brown (rapporteur)

• North Pacific Marine Research (NMPR) meeting held in Fairbanks: NPMR held a wrap-up PI meeting last week. Several FOCI researchers participated.  In all, about twenty projects were funded from this source for research in the North Pacific and the Bering Sea.  NPMR will soon be governed by the North Pacific Research Board which will include representatives from NOAA (Jim Balsiger), the commercial fishing industry, etc. Grants probably will come through the Alaska Sea Life Center instead of the University of Alaska.  New proposals will be accepted for 2003 once the administration for this new group is established.

 
• Northeast Pacific GLOBEC: A Northeast Pacific GLOBEC PI meeting will be held next week at PMEL, November 13-16.  This will be an open meeting; those who would like to attend may do so.

• SEBSCC Indices Working Group:  The SEBSCC indices working group will meet in Seattle.  The dates of the meeting may change, but are now set for December 13-14.  Local members of this group may meet before then to determine critical spatial and temporal scales.

• Matt Wilson gave a brief report on the young-of-the-year cruise conducted in September (MF-01-10).  The cruise was structured such that the same sampling grid was occupied as last September.  An anchovy mid-water trawl was used to obtain age-0 pollock and a Tucker  trawl was used to sample their prey.  Both gears were fished day and night at the same stations for comparison.  Other samples taken were age-1 pollock for studies of vertical migration, hydrographic data, and neuston samples for surface plankton.  From the data and samples obtained, Matt will be looking at the distribution of age-0 pollock and why they accumulate in the areas they do.  This will include studies on diet, growth, etc.

 
• Mooring recovery (MF-01-11):  Phyllis Stabeno reported that it was not possible to recover the Barnabus Canyon moorings due to weather conditions.  PMEL will try to recover these moorings in December.  All new moorings have been deployed sucessfully.  Shelikof moorings will be retrieved in February and then redeployed that same month.

The FOCI request for Miller Freeman 2002 ship time has been submitted to Gary Stauffer. Gary has not yet determined how cruise time will be assigned. Arrangements are still in progress for other vessels to be used by FOCI next year.

AFSC and PMEL laboratory directors have asked FOCI to help develop an FY04 budget initiative to fund research in support of ecosystem management.  The proposed initiative would focus on the Bering Sea and include other groups at AFSC (REFM and Marine Mammals).

Should science presentations be a part of the PI meetings?  Past meetings with such discussions have been valuable.  This would be an informal way to present new research ideas for consideration.  Please submit new ideas to Allen Macklin so he may include them on future meeting agendas.

Because of the SEBSCC Indices Workshop, the December FOCI PI meeting is canceled.  The next meeting will be January 10, 2002, 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.