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