The Southwest Fisheries Science Center will conduct two cruises to support an international coastwide survey of the distribution and abundance of Pacific sardine and other coastal pelagic species in order to enhance stock assessments. The first is a joint Southwest Fisheries Science Center-Northwest Fisheries Science Center-industry sardine/hake survey aboard the NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada and an industry provided hake trawler, the Forum Star. This survey will begin June 24th and will cover the region from south of Monterey Bay to the northern tip of Vancouver Island. The goal will be to measure the summer distributions of the northern Sardine stock at the time of maximum northward migration into Canada and during the period that the industry aerial survey is conducted off Oregon and Washington. The second cruise will be aboard the contract research vessel Ocean Starr and will survey from the Mexican border to San Francisco. This survey will measure the extent that the Central stock migrates from Mexico into Southern California.
For more information on SWFSC’s coastal pelagic research programs, please visit the Fisheries Research Division
Visit the NOAA Ship Tracker to track the movments of the NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada
Updates of the CalCOFI leg aboard the Ocean Starr can be found on the CalCOFI Cruise Twitter feed
Aboard the NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada |