U.S. Department of Commerce / NOAA / OAR / ERL / PMEL / FOCI
	Fisheries-Oceanography Coordinated Investigations

Ned Cokelet, Al Hermann, Art Kendall, Lynn Long  (rapporteur),  Allen Macklin, Bern Megrey, Jeff Napp, Ron Reed, Phyllis Stabeno

• Al Hermann has created new 3D realizations from the Shelikof Strait circulation/IBM model.  All interested persons are invited to stop by his office (3/2071) to view them.

• SEBSCC  and the Inner Front Study are considering holding a joint PI meeting  in Seattle later this year. The purpose of the meeting would be to convene individual project sessions, a joint "Status of the Bering Sea" meeting, and to plan for a special journal edition on the southeastern Bering Sea. Potential dates for the meeting  are Monday through Wednesday, November 8 - 10, 1999.

George Hunt and Jeff Napp have proposed a special session for the next AGU/ASLO meeting in February 2000 to be held in San Antonio, TX.   The session is called "Weather and the Amount and Fate of Production in the Ocean."  It will be appropriate for papers dealing with recent weather-induced or short-term climate-induced changes in the Bering Sea ecosystem, as well as in other regions that have GLOBEC-like programs.

• Phyllis Stabeno discussed the Miller Freeman  late April mooring cruise (MF99-05).  Figure 1 shows the cruise track.  Many of the recovered instruments showed evidence of considerable biological fouling and corrosion. The ADP at mooring 2 failed to release from its anchor.  Another attempt will be made in September.  At Pribilof Canyon, two current meters and a Seacat were not found, but may have been  recovered by a fishing boat.  Sea ice was present on the southeastern Bering Sea shelf into May this year, much later than normal.  In early May, a finger of ice advanced southward across the shelf, hitting mooring 2 and moving it about 7 kilometers to the south-southeast.  The mooring buoy and meteorological tower were inspected visually during the following cruise (MF99-06) and did not appear to be damaged.   The instruments in the Freeman's sea chest appear to be working well, providing  salinity, temperature, and chlorophyll a (fluorescence) data.  Of particular interest were fluorescence peaks at the ice edge (Figure 2).  These were noted when the ship entered and exited the ice.  High fluorescence was also noted along the peninsula during this cruise and the next.

 
• Jeff Napp reported on the next cruise aboard the Freeman (MF99-06) in early May.  The purpose of the cruise was to collect NPZ samples for the SEBSCC monitoring study and samples for nutrient dynamics, primary productivity, and copepod egg production studies.  Plankton samples for stable isotope analyses to dissect the marine food web were also collected.  Figure 3 shows the stations visited during the cruise.  On the southeastern Bering Sea shelf (stations 1 ­ 5 at Mooring 2), the water was cold (-0.6 deg C), well mixed, and full of large centric diatoms.  Inorganic nitrogen was still plentiful enough to support phytoplankton growth.  Fluorescence and stratification increased along the 70-m isobath between the southeast (Mooring 2) and northwest (Mooring 4) monitoring stations. At the northwest site, the water was colder at the surface, fluorescence was higher, but inorganic nitrogen was almost depleted.  This indicates that the spring bloom was finished, barring significant wind mixing.  An unexpected finding was large numbers of oceanic and outer shelf domain (osd) plankton at the northwest cluster of monitoring stations. This implies that there was large-scale, cross-shelf transport.  Many pollock eggs were found at stations between the Pribilof Islands.  Water properties along the northeastward cross-shelf transect from the slope past Mooring 3 to Mooring 2 showed the water column was stratified in the osd with surface temperatures of 2 deg C and measurable quantities of inorganic nutrients.  Monitoring ended at Mooring 2 where the water had cooled to ­1.6 deg C by northerly winds and ice.  The surface portion of Mooring 2 was visually inspected (after the ice departed), and ground-truth samples were collected.  Before concluding the cruise, a bongo transect, not shown in Figure 3, was established orthogonal to the Alaska Peninsula just northeast of Amak Island to collect larval pollock for otoliths and genetic studies.  High concentrations were found at the two most inshore stations.  

 
• Separating the mooring and sampling cruises proved to be very advantageous.  It freed time to deal with problem moorings and allowed biologists to revisit a site during a cruise, repeating measurements over time with the opportunity to note significant changes.

• Satellite-tracked drifters deployed this spring in the eastern Bering Sea (Figure 4) show weak flow on the shelf and east of Unimak Pass, unorganized flow in the basin, and a clockwise rotating eddy near mooring site 6.

 
• The first Wecoma cruise went well, although there were some problems with the new Niskin bottles.  A design flaw is suspected.

 
• Art Kendall, Jeff Napp, Ned Cokelet, Mark Koehn, and Michele Bullock contributed to plans for the new NOAA fisheries research vessel.  The plans are posted on the 1st floor of building 4, and copies can be obtained from Dan Twohig (206 526-4166; Dan.Twohig@noaa.gov). The proposed launch date for the ship is 2003.

 
• The current Miller Freeman science party is investigating greenbelt water properties, midwater ecology, and shelf-slope currents and transfer processes.

The next FOCI PI meeting will be held at 10 a.m., June 10, 1999,  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.

Mail corrections and addenda to the FOCI Coordinator.

Figure 4.  Tracks of satellite-tracked drifters launched in late winter and spring 1999.  The gold track shows an eddy northwest of Unalaska Island.