Paper 7 



OCEANIC CONDITIONS DURING 1976 BETWEEN 

 SAN FRANCISCO AND HONOLULU 

 AS OBSERVED FROM SHIPS OF OPPORTUNITY 



J. F. T. Saur' and D. R. McLain 



INTRODUCTION 



Durino 1976 cooperating merchant ships continued to make sections 

 of surface salinity samples and of expendable bathythermograph 

 (XBT) observations on the San Francisco-Honolulu ship route 

 (Fig. 7.1). Similar sections of observations were obtained most 

 of the yearr but less frequently^ on the Seattle and Los Angeles 

 to Hawaii routes. These/ however^ were discontinued at the end 

 of October for lack of funds* and these two routes are not 

 considered in this paper. The sampling was done for the National 

 Marine Fisheries Service using funds provided by the National 

 Science Foundation under the NORPAX program. 



Tne San Francisco-Honolulu route crosses a Transition Zone which 

 Lies between the cooLer/^ lower salinity/' modified subarctic 

 waters of the California Current and the warmer/ higher salinity 

 waters of the Eastern North Pacific (ENP). Laurs and Lynn (1975/ 

 1977) indicated that the character and position of the Transition 

 Zone/ directly or indirectly/ influence the offshore distribution 

 and migration routes of albacore tuna movina from the central 

 Morth Pacific into the summer fishery off the continental west 

 coast . 



Selected vertical sections of the data have been published 

 monthly in LishioS iQformat ion ' since March 1972. Interpreta- 

 tions of features in the sections were included through March 

 1975 (Saur 1972-75). Saur et al. (1979) discussed the char- 

 acteristics of long-term mean vertical sections of subsurface 

 temperatures trom the XBT data on the San Francisco route. 



Scripps Institution of Oceanography/ La Jolla/ CA 92P37. 

 "Pacific Environmental Group/ National Marine Fisheries Service/ 

 c/o Fleet Numerical Weather Central/ Monterey/ CA 93940- 

 'Southwest Fisheries Center/ NMFS/ NOAA/ La Jolla/ CA 92037. 



77 



