Fisheries-Oceanography Coordinated Investigations (FOCI)

Art Kendall, Ron Reed, Ric Brodeur, Ann Matarese, Al Hermann, Jim Overland, Allen Macklin, Jeff Napp, Phyllis Stabeno, Ned Cokelet, Matt Wilson (rapporteur)

• The Winter ‘98 FOCI seminar series will take place at noon on Thursdays (except the second Thursday of the month) from 1/22/98 to 3/26/98. The schedule is available through the FOCI website (http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/foci/.

• SCS (Scientific Computing System) is being upgraded on the Miller Freeman. A parallel Windows NT-based system will be installed. Dennis Shields will be at PMEL on 1/9/98 from 1to 5pm to talk with scientists and technicians about the system upgrade. There will be a training class at PMC for marine and electronic technicians.

• Cruise instructions: A draft must be submitted 95 days in advance of the cruise to the Field Operations Leaders (Art and Phyllis) and the FOCI Liaison Officer (Michele Bullock). They have 5 days to review and revise the draft that is then submitted to PMC. Final drafts are due 35 days prior to the cruise. Guidelines are available on the website, and these are continuously being updated. A standard operating procedure for FY1998 Miller Freeman operations is being circulated to Chief Scientists and PIs for review.

• Pre-season field operations meeting: A pre-season meeting to preview FOCI and other cruises aboard Miller Freeman is scheduled for 1/21/98 at 10 am in the ship’s wardroom. FOCI chief scientists who have not already submitted draft cruise instructions will prepare one-page cruise descriptions for the meeting.

• A PMEL site-review honoring the laboratory’s 25th year is scheduled for 6/23-24. A FOCI overview is planned. Requests for participation by AFSC scientists can be expected. Presentations will mostly be as posters that will be put into final presentation format by PMEL. The time needed to prepare the posters and web versions of them requires that material must be ready by late March.

• Jim Schumacher retired from federal service on 12/30/97. He will provide part-time consulting for FOCI during the calendar year.

• Liz Dobbins is a new JISAO employee working with Al Hermann and Sarah Hinckley. Liz earned her Masters from the University of Washington and has worked with Tom Powell at Berkeley.

• Two proposals related to FOCI’s objectives and the current El Niño year have been funded by OAR. Phyllis Stabeno, Art Kendall, Jim Schumacher and Jeff Napp will conduct a study of the in-flow to the Shelikof sea valley as documentation of El Niño effects in the Gulf of Alaska. This one-year study will deploy four subsurface moorings with CHLAMs in Shelikof (three on Line 8, one near Chirikof) from February to September. Six satellite-tracked drifters will also be deployed and a series of Tucker trawl samples will be collected to look at the influx of larvae from the south. NMFS will support the biological collections of larvae.

• Nick Bond and investigators from the ETL lab in Boulder and the NRL lab in Monterrey will observe Gulf of Alaska and Eastern Pacific Ocean storms from a NOAA P3 research plane operating from Anchorage during January and February. The teleconnection between the tropics and the North Pacific produces an intensified Aleutian Low during El Niño. The goal is to improve objective methods of atmospheric prediction by observing storm dynamics in areas that are particularly sensitive to atmospheric models.

Please mail corrections and additions to the FOCI Coordinator.

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