Oceanographic Atlas of the South Kurilean

Region of the Pacific Ocean

* Background

Waters adjacent to the Kuril Islands are one of the most important fishing regions of the Pacific. The Oceanographic Fishing Atlas of this region is a perennial cartographic generalization of hydrometeorological, oceanographic, hydrobiological and fishery information.

This Atlas could be considered as a development of the World Atlas'94 prepared within GODAR Programme and Surface Temperature Data Set of the Japan Oceanographic Data Centre (JODC) and also as an example of the description of fishery conditions in focal regions.

* Intended users

The Atlas could be used by experts from agencies and research institutes, dealing with analysis, planning and forecasting of fishery, etc., from various departments of Russia, Japan, China and countries of South-East Asia. The Atlas is also designed for captains and navigators of the fishing fleet. It would help navigators to organize effective search and catching of the Pacific saury, sardine and mackerel. This would considerably decrease the searching time for commercial accumulations of the fish and increase catching per fishing effort.

* Contents

The Atlas data elucidate in details a 120 mile zone to the South of the Kuril Islands from 144º to 151º of eastern longitude in summer-autumn months. The probability maps of fishing of the Pacific saury, sardine and mackerel for every decade, covering the region from 35º up to 45º of the northern latitude to the East of Japan throughout all the period of the catch, were drawn up.

Maps of the present Atlas have greater space scales (1:2 000 000) and sufficiently small averaging in time (decade, 5 days) permitting to use it for evaluating fishery conditions in the region and carrying out effective decisions during the fishing.

The Atlas includes three main divisions:

• Specific features of the Southern Kuril Region, general scheme of currents and location of major frontal zones, data of the horizontal thermal structure of the ocean surface for over several years;
• Data of perennial and seasonal variability of fishery conditions, hydrometeorological characteristics of the Southern Kuril Region, data on thermal structure, hydrochemistry, plankton, data on fishing of former Soviet and japanese fleets;
• Characteristics of monthly variability: data on water dynamic, on water surface temperature distribution in different hydrometeorological situations.

The Atlas could help understanding better oscillations of marine living resources in this area and is drawing scientific advice in fishing, that gives a certain interest and priorities for the FAO and regional IOC Programmes.

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