Fisheries-Oceanography Coordinated Investigations (FOCI)

Ric Brodeur, Ned Cokelet, Al Hermann, Art Kendall, Allen Macklin, Ron Reed, Phyllis Stabeno, Cindy Tynan, Matt Wilson

• Ric Brodeur announced that a symposium on Ecosystems of the North Pacific will be held at Seattle’s NOAA campus on 17 July 1998, coinciding with the visit of the Oshoru Maru. The symposium will include talks from both Japanese and local scientists. Morning talks will focus on the Bering Sea and will be held at building 9, while afternoon sessions, in the PMEL seminar room, will discuss the North Pacific and the Alaska Stream.

• The spring field season debriefing will be held on 22 July in room 2079, building 4.

• The annual SEBSCC meeting will be held at the end of the PICES annual meeting in Fairbanks on Saturday, October 24.

• Ric Brodeur reported on the GLOBEC meeting he recently attended. Participants discussed presently funded projects, and there was an announcement of opportunity for funding for next fall and winter. This research will probably focus on the California Current. The next funding for Alaskan research will probably be for 2000 or 2001. There will be another GLOBEC PI meeting during August 1999 in Seattle.

• Matt Wilson reported on his age-0 pollock survey south of the Alaska Peninsula. The cruise was diverted for a day to recover Bering mooring #2 that had broken free of its anchor a week before. In the western Gulf of Alaska rough counts of pollock showed several clusters of high abundances, but the 1998 year class is not expected to be exceptional. There was a gradual increase in the average length of fish from Unimak Pass to Kodiak; some of which could be due to growth during the duration (5 days) of the cruise. However, the answer is more complicated, since the western fish probably spawned in the Shumagins, where spawning occurs earlier than at the south Kodiak spawning area.

• Bill Parker redeployed mooring 2 from the Canadian Coast Guard ice breaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier in early July. The Laurier will be used again in October for mooring work.

• The Russian ship Professor Kaganovsky will be the working platform for this September’s ecosystem and juvenile pollock cruise to the Pribilof Islands.

• Other discussion: Ron Reed's cruise to the Bering Sea basin did find CFCs in the bottom water, but he doesn't feel that they indicate ventilation of the deep basin. On the possibility of observing apex predators during this year’s coccolithophorid bloom, Cindy Tynan reported that there isn't a ship-based survey comparable to her cruise last year. However, an aerial survey of right whales is seeing fin and humpback whales in shallower water than expected from historical records.  [see correction_1 below]

An article from the Anchorage Daily News reported that economic disaster faces western Alaska this year because of poor salmon runs in Bristol Bay and the Yukon River. The salmon season begins at the end of June, and its peak is normally near 4 July. This year’s run is low in Bristol Bay, although it is closer to normal in the Gulf of Alaska.

We know from FOCI research that the shelf was well mixed to 80m through May, and the spring bloom was late this year. Jellyfish were again abundant on the outer and middle shelf, but less prevalent in the inner domain. As an indicator of unusual circulation, the Inner Front cruise caught offshore euphausiids at the outer ends of their Cape Newenham and Nunivak Island lines. Again this year there is a major coccolithophorid bloom over the eastern Bering Sea shelf.

One explanation of why last year's prediction of Bristol Bay salmon was off is that the survey caught fish in False Pass, but few fish reached Bristol Bay. This is the origin of the assumption that belugas or pinnipeds ate the salmon between these two sites. Larry Merculieff speculated that hundreds of belugas and many sea lions are eating salmon because their normal prey may have been overfished. However, pollock abundance (another prey source for these apex predators) is higher than in the '60s and pinniped populations are decreasing.

Articles such as the Anchorage one do create a situation where FOCI can make its program and goals more visible, as well as responsibly report on the status of the ecosystem. A science-public relations advisory committee was formed. Members are Ric Brodeur, Phyllis Stabeno, and Jeff Napp. This committee will work closely with Steve Hammond in developing FOCI publicity.
 

The next FOCI PI meeting will be held at 10:00 a.m. Thursday August 13, 1998, in the AFSC Director’s Conference Room.

Please mail corrections to the FOCI Coordinator.

1. Beth Sinclair,  8/19/98: An apex predator survey will be conducted on the Sept. 6-18 cruise, Dutch-SNP-Dutch.  We have placed mammal observers on the FOCI September cruises since 94' in order to correlate observations with satellite instrumented fur seals.  We try to

duplicate historical (70's-80's) observation methodology as much as possible.  I think as a result, we will eventually have a nice comparative series.  The last two years, in conjunction with satellite data, should be especially interesting.

 

U.S. Dept. of Commerce / NOAA / OAR / ERL / PMEL