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

ATTENDING

Kevin Bailey, Ned Cokelet, Carrie Hadden, Sarah Hinckley, Art Kendall, Allen Macklin, Ron Reed, Phyllis Stabeno, Loren Tuttle (rapporteur)

• An International Fisheries Symposium, "Fish stock assessments and predictions: integrating relevant knowledge" will be held in Bergen, Norway, 4-6 December 2000.  The deadline for submitting titles and abstracts is 15 May 2000, and manuscripts are due 1 July 2000.

• Toby Tyrell, of the Southampton Oceanography Centre, has requested to send a graduate student on a future SEBSCC cruise to conduct cooperative coccolithophore studies in the Bering Sea.

• Lisa Rugen has left FOCI and NOAA.  AFSC FOCI personnel will meet to discuss the status of the databases Lisa was developing and strategy for filling the vacancy.

• Sigrid Salo will take a 6-week satellite imagery analysis course at Cornell University in June.  The course will have a marine emphasis, including AVHRR and SeaWIFS image analysis.

• The Announcement of Opportunity for SEBSCC Phase 3 research has not yet been published in the Federal Register.  The proposal deadline has been extended from 15 June to 11 July 2000, with notification of funding by 1 October 2000. [Note: the AO was published on May 12, 2000]

The southeastern Bering Sea shelf stayed cold after the strong early ice pack retreated at the end of January.  There has been some surface warming, but the deeper water remains cold.  This spring was calmer than 1998 or 1999; neither of the April and May FOCI cruises experienced many storms.  It was cold during the cruises, however, with frequent snow.  No aquamarine-colored water was noted, and it has been difficult to confirm the presence of a coccolithophore bloom from satellite images due to the lack of clear skies.  There was little evidence of larval fish in bongo tows from the Bering Sea during late April.

• MF00-05, Bering Sea moorings - The Unimak Pass CTD section was completed at the beginning and end of the cruise. Two moorings supporting NMFS crab research were recovered and replacements deployed in Bristol Bay.  At site 2, the ADCP mooring and the Chlam/SeaCat mooring were recovered, however there was no response from the acoustic release of the large subsurface mooring deployed last September.  A target was located about 1 km south of the original mooring position using the ship's echo sounder.  Dragging with ship's gear failed to recover the mooring that contained a nitrate sensor, fluorometer, current meter, SeaCats and mini-temperature recorders.  Another attempt will be made this summer.  Three moorings were deployed at site 2: ADCP, surface mooring (with meteorological package, fluorometer, Chlams, nitrate meter, current meters, SeaCats, mini-temperature recorders), and sediment trap.  At site 4, an ADCP and a subsurface mooring were deployed. At site 3, three moorings were deployed similar to those at site 2.  CTD casts and bongo tows were performed at all three sites and at four stations surrounding each site.  An off-shelf CTD transect was conducted from the shelf break to site 6 where a subsurface mooring was recovered and a replacement deployed.  Three drift buoys were deployed en route from site 6 to Unimak Pass.

 
• Due to the unavailability of the Ronald Brown, the FY00 cruise schedule has been adjusted.  FOCI lost 29 days of ship time on the Brown this spring, canceling 3 cruises (RB00-03, Legs 1, 2, and 3).  There will be FOCI ship time added in the fall, expanding the scheduled 19 FOCI days aboard the Brown to ~30 days in August and September.  The first part of this block of time may be used to address objectives of RB00-03 Leg 3, shelf-slope transfer.  The Brown's updated schedule will be posted on the FOCI web site as soon as possible.

 
• There have been a number of FOCI equipment failures on the Miller Freeman.  A meeting will be scheduled to discuss replacement and repair of aging equipment and the availability of back-up instruments.

A discussion of the methods for incorporating non-base FOCI research into annual ship requests was postponed until all  interested PIs could attend, probably in mid June.

The next FOCI PI meeting will be at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 15 June 2000, 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 next 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.