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

Rachael Cartwright (rapporteur), Ned Cokelet, Janet Duffy-Anderson, Carrie Hadden, Al Hermann, Nancy Kachel, Carol Ladd, Allen Macklin, Ann Matarese, Jeff Napp, Jim Overland, Phyllis Stabeno

• FOCI ship time requests (Project Description Forms) for the 2002 field season are due to the FOCI Coordinator by Friday, 13 July 2001. Project Description Forms are available in RTF and on-line submission formats through the Field Operations section of the FOCI web site (../../operations/guidance/documents.html).

• An AFSC Field Operations Leader is needed to help plan the 2002 field season with Allen Macklin and Phyllis Stabeno.

• SEBSCC Indices Working Group (Jim Schumacher, chair) meets Wednesday and Thursday, 13-14 June 2001, in the Oceanographer Room, PMEL.

• The Oshoro Maru will arrive in Seattle on 10 July 2001.  The Oshoro Maru Science Symposium will be held on 11 July, probably at the new fisheries building at the University of Washington.  Parking passes will be available.  Contact Jeff Napp if you would like to make a presentation at the symposium.  Also, interest in an informal gathering (i.e., picnic) with Japanese students from the Oshoro Maru should be directed to Jeff Napp.

• SEBSCC Synthesis Working Group (George Hunt, chair) meets 1-2 August 2001, in the Oceanographer Room, PMEL.

• The Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee has formed a Bering Sea Interagency Working Group, led by Suzanne Marcy (EPA), that will provide an integrated assessment for a sustainable Bering Sea.  The integrated assessment is in response to recent findings by the Arctic Research Commission that there is insufficient integration among key Bering Sea research programs.  Plans for the assessment will culminate at the Bering Sea Summit in Anchorage, AK, April 2002.

• NOAA's ships are changing from ccmail to Netscape mail and will use the @noaa.gov standard address.  Miller Freeman will change in June, Ron Brown in August.  Edit your address book for ships and ships' personnel accordingly.

• Be sure to supply accurate bills of lading for cargo to be loaded aboard vessels for science cruises.  A bill of lading describes cargo to be loaded including sizes and weights of items.  A bill of lading must be on record with the vessel before your equipment will be loaded.  If shipping equipment to a remote port, supply the bill of lading to the ship in advance of the shipment.  This will insure that your equipment can be loaded.  Gas cylinders must be placed on industrial palate racks for vertical storage.

• Five or six articles by FOCI authors about the 1997-1998 anomalous events in the Bering Sea were published in Fisheries Oceanography recently.  Reprints will be available soon.

• Authors of FOCI science papers are reminded to supply Joyce Gearhart with updated manuscript publication information as soon as it is received.

Gulf of Alaska cruises:

• Mooring deployment cruise (RB-01-03, Leg 1) - During this cruise, FOCI personnel deployed GLOBEC, Steller sea lion, and FOCI moorings across Shelikof Strait at line 8, south of Kodiak, off Gore Point and on the GAK line south of Resurrection Bay.

• Sampling, drifters cruise (RB-01-03, Leg 2) - Personnel surveyed the Seward GLOBEC/GAK line, Fairfield/FOCI line, Gore Point line, and 6 lines along the Amatouli Trough. Ninety-eight CTDs, 82 bongos, and 57 CalVETs were completed and 13 drifters were deployed. About a half day was lost to weather.

• Process studies cruise (HX-244) - During this GLOBEC cruise, FOCI personnel explored locations of interest, with or without unusually large blooms, along the northern Gulf's shelf.

• Late larval survey (MF-01-07) - Larval pollock were widely distributed.  Counts of larvae in the historic area of aggregation in the Shelikof sea valley and adjacent shelf were average to somewhat lower than average compared to past years.  Few pollock were caught outside of the sea valley/shelf region.

• Physical properties are quite different in the Shelikof Strait area compared to the northern Gulf of Alaska. The north Gulf of Alaska slope and shelf contain small and large canyons and a strong, convoluted, cross-shelf flow.  Production is this area is limited by the amount of nutrients. Because the northern Gulf of Alaska sets the upstream condition for Shelikof Strait, factors from the north affect the larvae in Shelikof Strait in ways and by means which we hope to learn from this work  Why, for example, is Shelikof Strait stable interannually, where the northern Gulf of Alaska is unstable?

• Mooring deployment cruise (MF-01-06) - The first two days' operations (CTDs from site #6 to site # 3) were missed due to weather.  Moorings were deployed and recovered at the Bristol Bay crab sites, sites # 2 and #4 and new moorings deployed in support of Steller sea lion research at Seguam Pass, Amukta Pass, in the Alaska Stream south of Umnak Island, and at Akutan Pass.  Following these operations, some of the weather-cancelled CTDs were completed that will define the strength of the North Aleutian Slope Current.  In all, 31 CTDs, 3 60-cm bongo tows, 18 moorings and 4 Argo buoys were deployed, and 4 moorings were recovered.  On the shelf, conditions were still cold: the upper mixed layer ranged from 3-4 deg C and was 20-40 m deep.  The temperature below was approximately 2 deg C and colder.

• Shelf-slope exchange (RB-01-03, Leg 3) - The objective of this cruise was to look at slope-shelf interaction and sample nutrient-rich water on the continental shelf.  A weak, anticyclonic eddy was found in Pribilof Canyon with a strong Bering Slope Current meandering around the eddy.  Fluorometer data showed that phytoplankton levels were higher over the slope than on the outer shelf.  Ocean optics data were collected by personnel from Dalhousie University.

• Aleutian ecology (HX-245) - This Steller sea lion research cruise is currently underway, tracking 10 transmitting sea lions of 20 instrumented Steller sea lions.  The mammals are moving along the Aleutian Islands.  Directional movement (north and south) and diet are of primary concern.  Orca pods are also being sought for biological sampling.  Tissue samples well help determine whether individual Orcas consume a primarily fish or marine mammal diet.  In addition, upwelling, fluorescence, nutrients, and MOCNESS samples will be taken.  Three drifters will also be deployed upstream from the sampling area to determine flow through various passes.

FOCI's larval fish atlas will be published this summer.  This color reference includes abundance and distribution information for egg, larval, and adult life history stages of 100 West Coast, Northeast Pacific Ocean, and Bering Sea fish.

The next FOCI PI meeting will be at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 12 July 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.