him, Aagaard was unable to isolate the source 

 of this water mass but named the Bering Sea, 

 East Siberian Sea, and northern Chukchi Sea 

 as possibilities. 



Fleming and Heggarty (1966) described 

 water properties found in the eastern Chukchi 

 Sea on two summer cruises (2 August-1 Sep- 

 tember 1959 and 26 Juiy-28 August 1960) but 

 did not define water masses based on the ob- 

 served properties. They found warmer, less 

 saline water near the Alaskan coast extending 

 northward, more or less parallel to the coast- 

 line, as far as Icy Cape. In the Cape Lisburne- 

 Icy Cape area nearer the shore, they found a 

 southwestward surface intrusion of water 

 which was warmer and more saline (7°- 10° C, 

 >32%o) than that generally found throughout 

 Lhe area. They offered no suggestion regarding 

 a source of the intruded water. Distributions of 

 temperature and salinity farther offshore im- 

 ply the presence of a clockwise eddy, suggest- 

 ing the possibility that the anomalous intrusion 

 may have been the residue of a former eddy 

 trapped downstream from Cape Lisburne. 



Kinney, Burrell, et al. (1970), described four 

 distinct water masses present in the Bering 

 Strait in July-August 1968. Their description 

 was based on an analysis of four groups of 

 factors: nutrients, organics, C/N and PM 

 (carbon/nitrogen and particulate matter) , and 

 physical variables (temperature, salinity, and 

 density). The identified masses were charac- 

 terized as follows : 



1. deep water in the center of the strait and 

 surface water on the western side with 

 high nutrients, low organics, high salin- 

 ity, and low temperature, 



2. surface water in the central strait with 

 partially depleted nutrients, high or- 

 ganics, and varying temperature and 

 salinity, 



3. surface water in the eastern strait with 

 low nutrients, low organics, low salinity, 

 and high temperature, and 



4. deep water in the eastern strait with low 

 nutrients and high organics. 



Because the waters of the Bering Strait flow 

 northward into the Chukchi Sea, these four 

 water masses, particularly those of the eastern 

 and central portions, are important in any 

 study of the Cape Lisburne-Icy Cape area. 

 A general description of the circulation in 



the eastern Chukchi Sea can be constructed 

 from several reports of investigations in the 

 area and atlas portrayals of average surface 

 currents. In a few of these publications the 

 current portrayals are based on direct measure- 

 ments, but most of them are based on inference 

 from the distribution of water properties. 



The U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office Oceano- 

 graphic Atlas of the Polar Seas — Part II 

 Arctic (USNHO, 1958) shows a pattern of 

 surface currents (fig. 4) flowing northward 

 into the Chukchi Sea from the Bering Strait 

 to the vicinity of the Point Hope-Cape Lisburne 

 promontory, then northeastward through the 

 Cape Lisburne-Icy Cape area, with speeds of 

 0.5 to 1.7 knots. This portrayal was based on 

 records of vessel drift and dynamic considera- 

 tions, the latter being of little value in the 

 shallow Chukchi Sea. 



During a joint United States-Canadian ex- 

 pedition to Arctic waters in the summer of 

 1949 (Lesser and Pickard, 1950), 28 direct 

 measurements of currents were made in 15 

 locations in the eastern Chukchi Sea (four 

 surface and two bottom measurements in the 

 Cape Lisburne-Icy Cape area) . Surface 

 measurements were made with a drift pole and 

 near-bottom measurements were made with an 

 Ekman meter. Surface currents ranged from 

 0.0 to 0.5 knots in essentially random direc- 

 tions, except for two measurements made near 

 Point Hope and near Cape Lisburne which 

 showed currents diverging from the headlands 

 (NW and WNW) at 2.0 and 1.0 knots, re- 

 spectively. Near bottom (160 cm above the 

 bottom) currents in the same area (four 

 measurements) were found to be generally 

 northward, paralleling local isobaths at speeds 

 ranging from 0.2 to 0.5 knots. 



The most extensive program of current 

 measurements in the eastern Chukchi Sea to 

 date was conducted by the University of Wash- 

 ington in July-August 1960 as part of a study 

 of the environment of the Cape Thompson 

 region (Fleming and Heggarty, 1966). Current 

 meter obsei-vations were made at 161 stations, 

 21 of which were in the Cape Lisburne-Icy 

 Cape area. Drift cards and drogue buoys also 

 were used to measure surface currents, but 

 only south of Cape Lisburne. The measure- 

 ments revealed a general circulation pattern 

 (fig. 5) involving a northward flow from the 



