California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations

The California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) are a unique partnership of the California Department of Fish and Game, NOAA Fisheries Service and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The organization was formed in 1949 to study the ecological aspects of the sardine population collapse off California. Today our focus has shifted to the study of the marine environment off the coast of California, the management of its living resources, and monitoring the indicators of El Nino and climate change. CalCOFI conducts quarterly cruises off southern & central California, collecting a suite of hydrographic and biological data on station and underway.  Data collected at depths down to 500 m include: temperature, salinity, oxygen, phosphate, silicate, nitrate and nitrite, chlorophyll, transmissometer, PAR, C14 primary productivity, phytoplankton biodiversity, zooplankton biomass, and zooplankton biodiversity. Ancillary data collected include continuous underway sea surface & meterological measurements (SCIMS); Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) data; the Continuous Underway Fish Egg Sampler (CUFES, winter & spring); trace metals; sediments; MOCNESS net sampling;  bio-optics; PCO2 air-sea interface, and atmospheric measurements. Marine mammal and sea bird visual surveys are conducted during transits between stations as well as marine mammal acoustics recording.

Since 1949, hydrographic and biological data of the California Current System have been collected on CalCOFI cruises.  The 60 year hydrographic time-series includes temperature, salinity, oxygen and phosphate observations.  In 1961, nutrient analysis expanded to include silicate, nitrate and nitrite; in 1973, chlorophyll was added; in 1984, C14 primary productivity incubations were added.
These data are available on the CalCOFI website as:

• 1949-2009 CalCOFI Hydrographic Data Query Form (http://db.calcofi.net/index.html) - search the 60 year time-series by entering specific criteria such as date-time, CalCOFI Line and/or Station, cruise, and depth. Query results display in tabular form in your web browser and may be exported (downloaded) in doc, csv, xls, & xml formats. This online version of cast & bottle data have been combined into a single database table to make queries a single operation. Some data columns are not yet queriable online (primary productivity depth data, for example) but all data presented are published, final data. For a complete version of the hydrographic database, download the MS Access database or Sql versions listed below. For integrated data queries such as ichthyoplankton + hydrographic data, try DataZoo.
• Database - Mar 1949 - Jul 2009 (ver 17Dec09: CalCOFI_Bottle_Data_1949-200907.zip) hydrographic bottle data report (IEH data + published Data Report data); Microsoft Access format
  • Csv - (CalCOFI_Bottle_Data_1949-200907_csvs.zip; updated 17 Dec 2009) bottle and station information csvs (final data only) exported from the research version of the Access database.
  • Sql - (calcofi_iehdata_194903-200907SQL.zip) a sql dump of the web version of the database (final published data; from phpadmin/mysql).
• CTD data - 1994 - 2009 raw, preliminary-processed and bottle-corrected final 1m bin averaged Seabird 911+ temperature, salinity, oxygen, fluorometer, transmissometer, PAR, and ISUS electronic sensor data.
• CTD Query Form - 2009 Final Bottle-corrected CTD 1m binavg data search form; test page
• Downloadable IEH ascii files (1949-2009). two versions: (YY=year, MM=month)