To develop an understanding of stock structure and recruitment variation in Bering Sea pollock, the Coastal Ocean Program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) funded an 7-year (1991-1997), interdisciplinary project named Bering Sea Fisheries-Oceanography Coordinated Investigations (BS FOCI) for which NOAA and academic researchers were selected through a competitive process. The project goals, based on recommendations from an international symposium on pollock were to (1) determine stock structure in the Bering Sea and its potential relationship to physical oceanography, and (2) examine recruitment processes in the eastern Bering Sea.