California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (transect)

This layer is intended to represent the geographic extent of NOAA Fisheries’ California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations Survey transects. NOAA’s portion of California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) started in 1949 and is led by NMFS Southwest Fisheries Science Center. This survey is managed by the Fisheries Oceanography Program, composed of the Ichthyoplankton Ecology and Ship Operations groups. These groups work to contribute to the understanding of the effects of climate change and climate variability on pelagic fisheries. Alongside informing management decisions and publishing long-term datasets, the fisheries oceanography program also tracks long-term trends in key habitat variables, assesses stock-recruit and temperature-recruitment relationships for sardine assessments and updates environmental indices. The ship operations group averages 100-120 days at sea annually. Approximately 80 percent of that time is dedicated to the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations program collecting data through cruises. Surveys collect biological data via trawls, acoustic monitoring, and plankton sampling.