CalCOFI IEH Data

The California Oceanic Cooperative Fisheries Investigation (CalCOFI)
is a unique partnership of the California Department of Fish and Game,
the NOAA Fisheries Service and the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography. The organization 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 and the management of its
living resources. The organization hosts an annual conference,
publishes data reports and a scientific journal and maintains a
publicly accessible data server ("http://www.calcofi.org").

Since 1949, CalCOFI has organized cruises to measure the physical and
chemical properties of the California Current System and census
populations of organisms from phytoplankton to avifauna. This is the
foremost observational oceanography program in the United
States. Currently, two to three week cruises are conducted
quarterly. Scripps and NOAA provide equally in terms of ship time,
personnel, and other cruise-related costs. On each cruise a grid of 66
stations off Southern California is occupied. At each station a whole
suite of physical and chemical measurements are made to characterize
the environment and map the distribution and abundance of
phytoplankton, zooplankton and fish eggs and larvae.

Data available are:

1) meteorological observations

2) temperature, salinity, oxygen

3) water masses and currents

4) nutrients

5) primary production

6) phyto- and zooplankton biomass

7) phyto- and zooplankton biodiversity

8) distribution and abundance of fish eggs & larvae, marine
birds and mammals

Data link: "http://www.calcofi.org/data/data.html"
This information is from the
"http://www.calcofi.org/whatiscalcofi.html" web site.