Report of the

U.S. GLOBEC Northeast Pacific

California Current

# Scientific Investigatorís Meeting

November 12 - 14, 2000

Edited by Harold P. Batchelder and P. Ted Strub

This workshop was organized by the U.S. GLOBEC Northeast Pacific Coordination Office.

The scientific investigators who attended the workshop provided the abstracts, posters, and figures for this report. Hal Batchelder, Ted Strub, and Linda Hunn put this report together.

The U.S GLOBEC Northeast Pacific California Current Scientific Investigatorís Workshop and this report were sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Introduction

The U.S. GLOBEC Northeast Pacific (NEP) Program is a large multidisciplinary, multi-year oceanographic effort focusing on the biology and ecology of juvenile salmon, euphausiids, large copepods, and forage fish in coastal regions of the North Pacific, and how these populations are controlled by physical and biological processes at large- to meso-scales. Two specific regions have been targeted for intensive

field studies and long-term observations: (1) the wind driven, coastal upwelling California Current

System (CCS), especially the region extending from central Oregon south to Northern California, and,

(2) a coastal Gulf of Alaska (CGOA) shelf region southwest of Prince William Sound. U.S. GLOBEC studies in the NEP have been phased in gradually. NEP research began in 1997 with integrated, multi-investigator, interdisciplinary programs of modeling, retrospective analysis, and long term observation programs (LTOPs). Focused process-oriented and field surveys of the CCS were planned for the summers of 2000 and 2002; these will alternate with intensive field studies in the CGOA in 2001 and 2003. The U.S. GLOBEC research effort in the NEP has an ultimate goal of improving the predictability and management of living marine resources in the region by developing better insights and under-standing of ecosystem interactions and the coupling between the physical environment and the living resources at multiple temporal and spatial scales. The physical environment and biological populations of the eastern Pacific respond strongly to climate variability at several temporal scales: interannual

changes like El Nino-La Nina oscillations; and, longer-term, lower frequency, probably atmospherically forced, changes like the regime shift that occurred in the winter of 1976-77, and perhaps more recently in the late 1990ís. The U.S. GLOBEC research program is supported primarily by the U.S. National

Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences, and by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationís Coastal Ocean Program and National Marine Fisheries Service. Ancillary funding for some projects within the program is provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

U.S. GLOBEC is a component of the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

This U.S. GLOBEC Northeast Pacific Scientific Investigatorís workshop was held at the International Forum Room on the campus of Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. The meeting goals were:

ď To share mesoscale and process, LTOP, retrospective and modeling results

ď To begin to integrate and synthesize findings

ď To prepare for national and international meetings

ď To interact with other investigators who might have insights into interesting, but unexplained, results

ď To identify research nuggets of particular interest and broad appeal for early investigations

ď To discuss future (2002) field (LTOP, mesoscale, process) research in light of observations/knowledge gained from the 2000 investigations. Specifically, what went well in 2000; what needs to be improved; and, to begin logistical planning for 2002.

There were four mechanisms for communicating results during the meeting:

ď Short Oral Presentations

ď Posters

ď Structured Working Groups

ď Informal Discussions/Unstructured Breakout Groups

## Narrative

Sunday, 10 November 2000

The workshop began on Sunday, 12 November 2000. Ted Strub, chair of the NEP Executive

Committee, began the meeting by reviewing the agenda and describing the objectives, goals and possible products of the workshop. Attendees were asked to think about potential future meetings at which GLOBEC NEP/CCS results could be highlighted in special sessions. We revisited discussion of special meetings and publications on the final day.

Each funded project was allotted ca. 10 minutes to describe the results and progress made during the past year. Prior to the meeting, the PIís were encouraged to

provide the highlights of their results orally, and to provide the details in accompanying poster presentations. The response to this suggestion was heartening as the short oral presentations of most projects were supplemented by 1-2 posters. Appendix I provides an agenda of the speakers on day 1.

We concluded day one of the meeting by devoting about 20 minutes for brainstorming possible

working group breakout sessions. Because time was short, and we did not want to cut into the

scheduled poster session time from 1730-1900, we resolved to continue this discussion as the

first topic for the following day.

The ca. 1.5 hour long poster session was well attended and led to many fruitful discussions among the scientific investigators. So much so, that we scheduled time for scientists to revisit posters on day two

of the meeting.

The Northeast Pacific Executive Committee (NEPEXCO) met on Sunday evening from 1745 - 1930 to discuss the science that had recently been funded for the Coastal Gulf of Alaska region within the NEP program. All of the NEPEXCO members (Barth, Botsford, Brodeur, Peterson, Powell, Schwing, Strub,

and Tynan) were in attendance, as was Hal Batchelder and Beth Turner. Strub summarized the very positive discussions that had occurred at the NEP/CGOA PI meeting on 8-9 November 2000 in Seattle. All projects but one were represented at the CGOA meeting, and the discussions were collegial and productive. Ted outlined the principal recommendations/changes that the CGOA PIís felt could be reasonably accommodated and which would improve the spatial context of the process oriented work. First, the PIís suggested reordering some of the LTOP and process cruises so that all process cruises

are almost immediately preceded by LTOP cruises. Second, it was recommended that 3-4 days of

NOAA Vessel Ron Brown be used to survey ěfine-scaleî regions surrounding each of the three shelf process sites in May 2001. Third, it was suggested that each of the three Alpha Helix LTOP cruises

that precede the process-work be extended by two additional days, to permit sampling along a line extending offshore from Cape Clear, parallel to the Seward Line. The modified Cape Clear line is upstream of the process stations and would provide an opportunity to partition water, nutrients,

plankton, etc., between along-shelf flow and flow exiting from Prince William Sound. We believe that some, but not all of the requested addition of 6 days may be recovered by reprogramming existing

days allocated to December 2001 sampling (although this was not clear). There would need to be a request made to NSF and/or NOAA for additional ship days to permit the full extended sampling to be completed.

Following Tedís summary, the group discussed the CGOA sampling plan and developed several additional ideas that might improve the sampling design. The ideas of the NEPEXCO were forwarded after the meeting to all of the NEP/CGOA PIís for their consideration prior to their next planning

meeting (scheduled for 11-12 January 2001).

Monday, 13 November 2000

On day 2, the meeting started with a plenary session (chaired by T. Strub) which continued

brainstorming potential topics for working groups. Suggestions for working groups included:

1) providing the climate context to contemporary field observations and potential regime changes;

2) model-data comparison; 3) generation of salient questions about the comparison of regions

north and south of Cape Blanco; 4) comparison of nearshore vs. offshore features and the importance

of upwelling fronts and mesoscale structures to biological interactions; 5) comparison of 2000 with

earlier years; 6) importance of Heceta Bank and other topographic features in creating regions with

high retention; 7) trophic interactions; 8) zooplankton sampling working discussion on sampling in the CGOA and CCS, particularly for euphausiids; 10) linkages of scales from continuous to discrete

patches, particularly for linking observations made on different spatial scales/resolutions; 11) connec-tions to inner-shelf processes, particularly linkages to the PISCO program; and, 12) influence of the Columbia River in controlling ecosystem processes off Oregon.

After the brainstorming session, oral presentations were made on a number of other programs that are sampling off Oregon or that are making ancillary observations in conjunction with GLOBEC. These included the PISCO program of near-shore sampling (moorings inshore of 25 m and intertidal sampling of benthic invertebrates), the NSF funded COAST program, which will be sampling the Oregon shelf from Lincoln City, OR to Heceta Bank in May-June and August 2001; a NOPP West Coast Integrative Modeling effort that includes coastwide modeling and regional modeling focused on Vancouver Island shelf, Oregon-Washington, Monterey Bay, and Pt. Conception. The NSF funded WEST program off

Point Reyes was described, as was the BPA program that has been sampling salmon off northern Oregon for several years and will continue for several more. Finally, we heard that the NMFS/NWFSC

will undertake similar diet studies of fish from the OCC and GLOBEC sampling efforts (coordinated by Jack Helle) in the Gulf of Alaska, to compare with similar data being generated from GLOBEC studies

in the CCS.

Bob Groman, data manager for the U.S. GLOBEC National Office, reviewed the GLOBEC data policy

and currently supported methods for serving GLOBEC data to the oceanographic community. He emphasized that the PIís should make their data available to their colleagues when it first becomes

useful to others. He encouraged the PIís to serve their own data locally, thus maintaining control over

it if updates were needed, but did offer that a central data repository at Woods Hole was available for small-to-medium sized data sets. There is currently not sufficient data capacity to handle large data

sets like acoustics, OPC, or SeaSoar data.

After lunch on day 2, we reassembled for several hours into informal working groups around the

following themes: 1) 2000 process cruise data and priorities for analysis (Barth/Tynan); 2) comparison

of euphausiid research in the CGOA and CCS (Peterson/Hopcroft); 3) analysis of CCS MOCNESS samples, especially for euphausiids and copepods, but also considering gelatinous forms (Huntley/Peterson); 4) observations from the 2000 mooring program (Ramp/Kosro); 5) retrospective analysis of climate and ecosystem changes (Schwing/Berkeley); 6) salmon in the CCS issues (Botsford/Brodeur); 7) ecosystem modeling coupled to circulation models (Powell/Haidvogel/Hermann); and 8) microzooplankton studies in the CCS (Powell/Sherr).

Toward the end of the day, the attendees broke out into three formal working groups to discuss: 1) comparison of the CCS north and south of Cape Blanco (Barth); 2) trophic interactions (Wainright),

and 3) possible recent regime changes (Murphree). We concluded day 2 in plenary with short reports

of the discussions that occurred in the three formal working groups.

## Tuesday, 14 November 2000

Day 3 (morning only) of the meeting was devoted to additional working group discussions and poster viewing. In addition, the day began in plenary with a discussion of future venues/opportunities for presenting GLOBEC NEP/CCS research at public meetings and in special publications. Greatest

interest was expressed in having a special session (agreed to be co-chaired by Strub and Batchelder) highlighting ěBiophysical Interactions in the Northeast Pacificî at the next Ocean Sciences Meeting of AGU (February 11-15, 2002 in Honolulu, HI). There was some interest also on having a session on

shelf-coastal systems at the Fall 2002 AGU meeting in San Francisco, CA (December 6-10, 20002).

A number of specific options for special publications highlighting U.S. GLOBECís research in the NEP were forwarded by the attendees, including 1) Topical Studies in Oceanography, 2) JGR-Oceans, 3) Progress in Oceanography, and 4) Fisheries Oceanography. There was some reluctance of the

physical oceanographers to Fisheries Oceanography as a venue because it is not generally read by

that community. Batchelder noted to the group that the National GLOBEC office, chaired by Mike

Fogarty at the NEFSC of NOAA in Woods Hole, plans a sponsored issue of ěOceanographyî, the magazine of The Oceanography Society for late fall-winter of next year. One or two chapters,

depending on the eventual organization of the issue, will be devoted to the NEP program of GLOBEC. Batchelder and Strub will take the lead on coordinating a team of authors in producing the articles for

this issue.