The Epipelagic Fish Community of Beaufort Sea Coastal Waters

An arcticle was prepared to describe the results of offshore fishery research
conducted in northern Alaska. The research was conducted between 1988 and 1991
but new information obtained on the distribution and abundance of Arctic fishes
was never published. The combined, multi-year oceanographic (fishery and
hydrography) sampling effort repesents the most extensive data set (including
resource inventory) from offshore locations in the Beaufort Sea to-date. The
main objective was to obtain a broad spatial-temporal sampling extending
several kilometers offshore of the mainland coast, with the ultimate goal of
discerning general patterns in community composition, species relative
abundance, and habitat relationships. An emphasis was placed on dolly varden
(Salvelinus malma) and arctic cisco (Coregonus autumnalis) habitat utilization
of marine waters. Both are regionally important in subsistence and commercial
fisheries. The offshore work employed active sampling gears and associated
thermohaline profiles providing high spatial-temporal resolution of catch and
environmental observations. This is in contrast to other published ecological
studies of the North Slope that have relied on passive gears and less precise
fish habitat associations. The ranges of variability in regional oceanography
and their effects on the fish community, evident during this study, exemplify
the ability of spatially extensive sampling to capture pattern over a wide
spectrum of spatial-temporal scales.

Supplementary Information:
The information for the abstract, purpose and

Geographic Description:
Offshore fishery of northern Alaska; Beaufort Sea Rectangle Coordinates