Data from a year-long mooring array across the shelfbreak/upper-slope of the Chukchi Sea are used to describe and quantify the circulation and water masses of the region. The timeseries revealed the year-round existence of the eastward-flowing shelfbreak jet and, seaward of this, the westward-flowing Chukchi Slope Current. In the mean the slope current is estimated to transport 0.57±0.04Sv of Pacific water, while the bottom-intensified shelfbreak jet transports 0.009±0.003Sv towards Barrow Canyon. The slope current is surface-intensified in summer and fall, and in winter and spring it becomes middepth-intensified, moves shoreward, and weakens. Two extreme states of the circulation were identified: (1) an enhanced slope current and reversed (westward-flowing) shelfbreak jet; and (2) a strong eastward-flowing shelfbreak jet and weak slope current. The former state occurs when the wind stress curl on the Chukchi shelf is positive, and the latter state occurs when the curl is negative. A simple theoretical model is used to determine the changes in sea surface height due to such wind stress curl forcing, which is consistent with the observed changes in flow seaward of the shelf – both in amplitude and phase – via geostrophic set up.