History
Formed in 1969 as the Pacific Environmental Group, the strategic location on the Monterey Peninsula
is based on the long-standing association with the U.S. Navy's
Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center (FNMOC), which
is the primary U.S. Government Facility particularly concerned with
marine weather and ocean conditions. The Navy's global environmental
data network has its major terminus at FNMOC. Their real-time
products and archived historical data files provide a unique
resource for fishery/environmental research. PFEL facilitates the
ability of fishery scientists to immediately and directly access
information on ocean properties and processes occurring within the
fishery habitats. The coverage is global. Locally, PFEL collaborates
extensively with the
Naval Postgraduate School, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories,
California Department
of Fish and Game, and a host of other marine science institutions in
the Monterey Bay area. There is also significant international
interaction, partly through the Climate and Eastern Ocean Systems
(CEOS) project; in September, 1994, PFEL hosted the first
international CEOS meeting, which brought an international group
of marine scientists together to discuss research progress on the
impacts of climate change on marine resources in upwelling ecosystems
around the world.
The staff of PFEL consists of four support/technical staff and nine
professionals; educational levels include BA (3), MA (2), and Ph.D. (4).
Areas of specialization include oceanography (5), fisheries biology (3),
and operations research (1). Visiting scientists,
postdoctoral associates, and other collaborators are
frequently present at PFEL for terms ranging from several weeks to three
years. Research results are published in the open literature.
PFEL has modern computing facilities and is
Macintosh and UNIX-based. |
Strategic Plan
The NMFS works to build sustainable fisheries
in the U.S. and part of this effort is to advance fishery
predictions. The research of PFEL supports the strategic
plan of NOAA and the mission of the National Marine Fisheries
Service by improving our knowledge of the effects of the
environment, including climate change, on marine resources.
Lack of understanding of the factors controlling
recruitment variation, often considered largely environmental, is
considered the major scientific problem hindering effective management
of fishery resources. In addition, enhanced understanding of
environmental effects on fish distribution would be of economic value
to the U.S. fishing industry. Predicting the effects of climate change
on fish populations requires both reasonable scenarios on how the
ocean/atmosphere system might change, and an understanding of how
these factors influence fish. PFEL's particular approach to the
fishery/environmental problem area has been shown to lead to new
insights on these problems. Specific research tasks at PFEL include:
PFEL also places significant effort on providing researchers with
environmental data and environmental index products:
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