R/V Sally Ride will attempt to occupy scheduled station locations between San Diego, CA, through Avila Beach, CA, to survey the distributions and abundances of pelagic fish stocks, their prey, and their biotic and abiotic environments in the California Current.
August 16, 2017
The Summer California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations survey aboard Scripps R/V Sally Ride ended Wednesday, August 16. Highlights from the past week included decent counts of sardine eggs (Sardinops Sagax) sampled in the Continuous Underway Fish Egg Sampler 45 miles off Point Conception on California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations line 80.0. Very minimal counts of anchovy eggs (Engraulis mordax) were collected in the continuous underway fish egg sampler throughout the survey. Both Pacific mackerel (Scomber japonicus) and Jack mackerel (Trachurus symmetricus) eggs were in abundance, mostly offshore.
On August 14, staff deployed the CCE2 mooring at California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations station 80.0 55.0 with a group from Scripps. This mooring is part of Long Term Ecological Reserve research, which uses California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations as one of their sites and helps fund the quarterly cruises. CCE2 will be moored indefinitely and has a full suite of oceanographic sensors and acoustic instrumentation, a great supplement to the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations data time series. Her sister, CCE1, is moored at California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations station 80.0 90.0.
August 11, 2017
The Summer 2017 California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations Survey is underway on the Scripps R/V Sally Ride. The cruise is in the second week and operations are going smoothly, with the current schedule to land back in San Diego on the morning of August 16, 2017. To date, staff have successfully occupied and completed 53 of the 73 total stations. A mobile lab unit was uploaded to the vessel, as well as an overboard pipe and pump, to collect continuous underway fish egg sampler data.
Current continuous underway fish egg sampler data has shown high concentrations of Sardine eggs off of San Pedro and very low concentrations elsewhere. Anchovy eggs have been absent thus far and the majority of the eggs found have been myctophid and mackerel. Pyrosomes have been extremely abundant. Sea pickles have been found in high concentrations offshore and at night, and regularly collected in all of the net tows.
