Fisheries-Oceanography
Coordinated Investigations (FOCI)
FOCI PI Meeting Minutes - 8 October
1998
ATTENDING
Ned Cokelet, Al Hermann,
Art Kendall, Mark Koehn, Mike Lemon, Allen Macklin, Ann Matarese, Jeff
Napp, Ron Reed, Beth Sinclair, Cyndy Tynan, and Dave Kachel (rapporteur)
ANNOUNCEMENTS
-
Mike Lemon, PMEL/OERD, was recently
detailed to Seattle from Newport. Mike will assist Phyllis Stabeno and
work in ship operations and planning. Mike will be taking over the charter
part of operations for the PMEL part of FOCI operations. Mike will become
Executive Officer of the NOAA Ship Miller Freeman in August.
-
Steve Hammond is representing FOCI at
an OAR/NMFS retreat in La Jolla today and tomorrow. The purpose
of the workshop is to explore ways to increase interactions between NMFS
and OAR.
-
Workshop on Recent Conditions in the
Bering Sea - This workshop, sponsored by FOCI, will take place November
9 and 10 on the NOAA Seattle campus. About 100 people will be invited to
participate.
-
SEBSCC Annual PI Meeting, Saturday,
October 24, 1998, Fairbanks, Alaska
-
SEBSCC Phase II request for proposals
supplemental announcement will be published in the Federal Register tomorrow.
Proposals are being accepted in the next 30 days, with the closing date
November 9. Researchers who previously submitted proposals for Phase
II research need not respond to this supplemental announcement.
FIELD OPERATIONS
-
Ric Brodeur and shipmates recently returned
from a juvenile pollock cruise on the Russian research ship Professor
Kaganovsky. On the cruise scientists did habitat work and monitoring
station assessment. Storms were a problem for part of the cruise. The ship
well equipped for acoustics and trawling. There are problems with plankton
sampling and CTD acquisition, partly because the winches have no fine control
and 50m/minute is the slow speed. The plankton net deployment is in a poor
location and the ship does not handle well for maintaining a 45° wire
angle. About a third of the CTD stations will need to be scrapped.
CTD data on the middle shelf is problematic because of stratification.
During the cruise samples were taken from either side of a visible coccolithophore
"front."
-
The Canadian Ice Breaker Sir Wilfrid
Laurier is now recovering FOCI moorings from the Bering Sea and Gulf
of Alaska. This is the final cruise of the FY1998 season.
-
Juvenile pollock abundance during July
1998 was the lowest in the last four years based on samples collected aboard
the Japanese research vessel Oshoro Maru.
-
Not all of this season's cruise reports
are complete on the web. Kurt Zegowitz is compiling a list of deficiencies
for the Field Operations Leaders to review. The web versions will
be the official record of FOCI's field season.
-
1999 field season: A tentative
schedule
for 1999 ship operations is available from the FOCI web site http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/foci/.
The Miller Freeman is expected to complete repairs in March.
For the February mooring cruise, a replacement vessel will be used, perhaps,
the Laurier or the Thompson. The first FOCI cruise
aboard the Freeman is scheduled for April. FOCI will
make extensive use of the UNOLS vessel Wecoma through June.
RECRUITMENT PREDICTION
FOCI and NMFS Stock Assessment
scientists are exploring formal linkage of biophysical data used to formulate
the FOCI recruitment forecast directly into the stock assessment model.
Initial findings were presented at the Lowell Wakefield Symposium on Ecosystem
Considerations in Fisheries Management last month.
OCEAN STUDIES BOARD
Dr. William Fox, NMFS, will
present "The Science Program at the National Marine Fisheries Service"
at the next meeting of the Ocean Studies Board of the National Research
Council of the National Academy of Science. The Office of Science
and Technology would like to showcase some of the outstanding research
being conducted at NMFS. Toward that end, FOCI will provide information
on recruitment forecasting and recent conditions in the Bering Sea.
NEXT MEETING
The next FOCI PI meeting
will be held at 10 a.m., Thursday, November 12, 1998, in the Cloud Chamber
(3/2065).
CORRECTIONS
Please mail corrections
and addenda to the FOCI Coordinator.
FOCI
Coordinator MINUTES
SELECTION FOCI
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