Pacific ocean site descriptions table of Contents

Site : CalCOFI

CalCOFI-080-055 (CalCOFI Station 080.080, Lat 33.483 N; Long 122.533 W)

CalCOFI-080-080 (CalCOFI Station 080.055, Lat 34.317 N; Long 120.802 W)

CalCOFI-090-090 (CalCOFI Station 090.090, Lat 31.751 N; Long 121.316 W)

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  Site Type: Observatory
  
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  Observations types: physical, biological
  

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  Platforms: oceanic station sampled from ship
  
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  Variables measured:*
  

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  Hydrographic data: temperature, salinity
  
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    Biological data: chlorophyll
    

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  Start date: 1949; visited monthly to annually and since 1984 quarterly
  

The California Oceanic Cooperative Fisheries Investigation (CalCOFI) is a partnership of the California Department of Fish and Game, NOAA’s Fisheries Service and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The partnership was formed in 1949 to study the ecological aspects of the collapse of the sardine populations off California. Today its focus has shifted to the study of the marine environment off the coast of California for the purpose of the ecosystem based management of living marine resources.

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  The site is operational.
  
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  Support from NOAA is anticipated for the foreseeable future due to the importance of the program for the management of pelagic species
  

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  CTD casts to 500 m with rosette
  
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  Ship and shore-based data processing and distribution.
  

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  real-time data: CTD data upon request
  

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  delayed mode data: publically posted
  

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  Satellite data collection system used (present, future): none
  

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  Real-time data processing and distribution system (GTS encoding & distribution? in what format?
  

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  Metadata scheme (collection, distribution mean, format): Metadata is submitted by PI’s, stored in a relational database and exported as text, EML and/or NetCDF.
  

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  Possibilities of evolution to comply with a more general WMO GTS scheme (incl. metadata)? With data and metadata in relational database, export possible to match other arrangements.
  
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  Agreement to OceanSITES Data Access and Data Policy? Yes
  

Meteorological and hydrographic data collected by the CalCOFI program are used by the scientific community as a benchmark for the response of the California Current System to global and basin-wide climate forcing. Hydrographic and biological data collected are of critical importance for the management of economically important species of small pelagic fish by NOAA’s fisheries service and for the understanding of the response of these populations to changing ocean climate. Coastal observations carried out are used by the California Department of Fish and Game for the management of nearshore fisheries and by local governmental agencies as a conceptual framework for the interpretation of nearshore monitoring data.

Contact Person:

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  for enquiry about addition of instrumentation or sensors to the site: Ralf Goericke (rgoericke@ucsd.edu)
  
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  for possible ancillary measurements during cruises to the site: Ralf Goericke (rgoericke@ucsd.edu)
  
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  for data exchange: Karen Baker (kbaker@ucsd.edu)
  

Links / Web-sites:

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  for Project information : www.calcofi.org
  

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  for data access (if public) : www.calcofi.org and oceaninformatics.ucsd.edu/datazoo/calcofi
  

DAC: NDBC

GDAC NDBC: ftp://data.ndbc.noaa.gov/data/oceansites/CALCOFI/CALCOFI1/

compiled by: Ralf Goericke and Karen Baker, Jan 2010.

Fig. 1. Location of the 66 standard CalCOFI stations and the 3 OceanSites stations off Southern California. Since 1984 the grid has been visited quarterly. Between 1949 and 1984 a larger grid was covered initially at monthly intervals but later on at irregular intervals.

Fig. 2. 10 m temperature and salinity anomalies at CalCOFI3 (St 90.90). Anomalies are calculated relative to the 1984 to 2008 time series. Data from individual cruises are plotted as open diamonds. The solid lines are loess fits to the data and the dotted lines are the climatological mean, which in the case of anomalies is zero.