EXCO Minutes December 6, 1996


        Below are the minutes from the recent Executive Committee
        meeting.

                                        David Mountain



Executive Committee meeting
December 6, 1996
University of Rhode Island

This was the first meeting of the newly elected Executive 
Committee (ExCo) for phase II of the program.  Attending were 
Peter Wiebe, Scott Gallager, Larry Madin, Greg Lough, David 
Moutain, Jim Bisagni, Karen Wishner, and Ted Durbin.  Robert 
Beardsley and Daniel Lynch were unable to attend.  Robert Groman 
also attended in the morning and Donna Busch attended in the 
afternoon.

The agenda for the meeting was:
     1)   to elect a new Chair and Rapporteur
     2)   review the draft report of the Scientific Investigators
          Workshop
     3)   discuss preparation of an Announcement of Opportunity
          (AO) for Phase III of the program.

Two additional items were added:

     4)   discussion of cruise preparations and recommendations
          made by the Broad Scale Survey group (tabled by David
          Mountain)
     5)   discussion of Japan GLOBEC by Scott Gallager (tabled by
          Peter Wiebe)


Peter Wiebe, the previous Chair of ExCO, opened nominations for 
the new Chair.  The other members of the Committee unanimously 
nominated and voted for Peter to continue as Chair.  It was noted
that the funding for Peter's scientific involvement in the 
program is still to be resolved.  The group felt to call on Peter
to be the Chair, were his science not to be supported, would be
unreasonable and unfair to him.  It was agreed to cross that 
bridge when it comes.  Nominations were then opened for
Rapporteur.  After some discussion, David Mountain made himself
available for the position and was immediately elected.

Peter passed out draft copies of report from the Scientific
Investigator's workshop held at the University of New Hampshire 
in November.  While attendance at the workshop and the
interactions that took place were not all that Peter had hoped 
for, he felt the workshop was a success and wanted the report to
convey that success.  In addition, he hoped that the report
itself might help further promote interactions among the
investigators.  He asked the committee members to review the
draft and make corrections and offer suggestions to make it 
better.  The report is organized by individual discipline and
then by cross disciplines.  Physical oceanography is presented
first, in part because they were probably the best organized as a
discipline at the workshop.  Three sections are still to be added 
under PO - reports by the Stratification group (Brink/Lenz), by 
the Intrusions group (Irish) and a write up of the PO lecture
session by Glenn Flierl.  The PO general session write up (p. 7)
has bullets identifying topic areas.  The vital rates section (p. 
15) is organized more by individual investigator - although topic
areas could be identified and added to make the section more
useful and consistent with the PO section.  Peter asked for
suggestions on topic identifiers to add to this section.  The
predation group section (p. 19) doesn't follow the same approach. 
Larry Madin agreed to look the section over and rearrange/add 
headings or make changes as seems appropriate. In addition, there
was a section written by the predation group for the zooplankton
modeling group meeting that needed to be merged with that
prepared by the Rapporteur of that session.

The Cruise Planning section of the draft report includes minutes
from a subsequent meeting of the Broad Scale survey group.  Being
in the report will provide a more permanent and wider 
distribution for the decisions reached by that group.  The 
minutes may need to be edited to eliminate minor details and to
focus on the more important issues addressed by the group.  Under 
the process cruises in the draft report, the vital rates group
has three cruises.  While the chief scientists and specific
sampling routines may change, there is a continuity to the
overall approach and objectives of the cruises.  Peter asked that
group review the present draft and revise it to convey that
continuity and give a better flow to the description.  The
detailed specifics of sampling routines are still under
discussion (and may be until near cruise time) and may not need 
be in the report, but the guiding objectives and how the cruises
will accomplish them would be important to capture for the
readers of the report.

Karen Wishner suggested that the cruise planning section might
form a separate report from the scientific workshop sections. 
Jim Bisagni suggested that, if not a separate report, the cruise 
planning section might be better presented as an appendix.  Peter 
indicated a desire to have only one report, but having the cruise
planning as an appendix would be considered.

The section of the draft report on Phase III planning is, 
according to Peter, largely a stream-of-conscious right now.  He
suggested that he might drop much of it and needs to work on it 
more.

Bob Groman passed out a list of attendees at the workshop.  As a 
side note, Peter said that because few investigators stayed the
entire time, the Program Office would be able to honor its 
commitment to offset the cost of those few. 

Peter asked if there were other things that should be in the
report.  The actual working on data - doing science - that took
place and the beginnings of manuscripts (at least to identify 
topics and investigators) are not captured in the document.  
Peter said that he would try to write up a few paragraphs on 
this.  The inclusion of abstracts for next year's ASLO meeting 
was discussed, but it was felt better to put these on line on the
program's WEB page.  Some mention of the amount of computer power
present at the meeting and the real use of the database system
was another topic identified for inclusion in the report. Bob
Groman offered to write this up.

All comments and revisions to the draft report should be sent to 
Peter by Wednesday, December 11.

Peter asked for suggestions on how ExCo could encourage the
investigators to continue the group activity begun at the 
workshop and to begin additional interactions.  One suggestion 
was to review the draft report to identify what groups had been
formed at the workshop.

Concerning other attendees at ExCo meetings, Peter mentioned that
Bob Groman, in his role at the Program Office and as the database 
administrator, had been an ex-officio member of the Committee
during Phase I.  The Committee agreed that it was important for
Bob to continue in that role and to attend meetings.   Peter
indicated that Donna Busch, who is the central contact person 
coordinating the Broad Scale survey cruises, also had attended
the ExCo meeting, since some issue relating to Broad Scale
surveys is discussed at most meetings - and that her attendance
had been quite helpful.  The Committee agreed and invited Donna
to attend its meetings.  Peter pointed out that one member of
ExCo is appointed by the Coastal Ocean Program to represent the
COP study on Georges Bank - in order to promote close
coordination between the programs.  Michael Fogarty had been the
COP representative, but he recently moved from NMFS, Woods Hole
to the University of Maryland.  Peter will send a letter do Don
Scavia asking that a new COP representative be appointed.

Although Phase II is just beginning, Peter pointed out that ExCo 
needs to begin thinking about preparations for Phase III.  In 
particular, to have the proper timing for proposal submission and 
review before a 1999 field season, the AO for Phase III would 
need to be issued in the late spring or early summer of 1997.  A 
draft of the AO would need to be presented at the GLOBEC 
Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) meeting in April.  Then a
3-day meeting of the PI's should be held in July to review where
we stand scientifically as a program.  The meeting also could
serve  as a venue for a review of the program that is national
GLOBEC program is planning.  Karen Wishner pointed out the US
JGOFS has a data workshop planned for 8-17 July.  Tentative dates
for a 3-day meeting were chosen as 21-23 July.  The location
would be either Woods Hole or Narragansett - depending on
availability of facilities.  About 100 attendees could be
expected.

Some recommendations about preparing an AO are made at the end of
the draft workshop report (p. 50).  A copy of the AO for Phase II
was distributed, along with the section of the Implementation 
Plan describing the intended Phase III.  A new structure may be
needed for the AO, and some areas of research not identified in 
the Implementation Plan may need to be included.  Examples of the
latter are work on data assimilation and efforts to identify 
indices for future monitoring, based on what has been learned in 
GLOBEC.  Research on other factors that have been recognized only 
as a result of the work in Phases I and II might also need to be 
included under Phase III.  As a starting point, Peter proposed a
group be identified to prepare a background paper - perhaps for
EOS.  Suggested names were: Lynch, Beardsley, Durbin, Gallager,
Mountain, Lough, Wiebe, and Bisagni.  Peter will approach Lynch 
about the possibility of hosting an overnight meeting at
Dartmouth before Dec 17 (when Scott goes to sea and Ted goes on 
leave).

Cruise planning issues were discussed, focused on the
availability of MOCNESS systems.  An inventory of various
components was estimated as:

                    Batteries               Underwater Units
         12-bit          16-bit         12-bit           16-bit
 Wiebe    1               0                1               0
 Lough    4               4                1               3
 URI      0               2                0               1

                        Frames
              1-M      10-M     1/4-M
 Wiebe/WHOI     1       1       1
 Lough          1       1       1
 URI            1       0       0

Lough's 1-m frame and the 16-bit electronics systems likely will
be at BESS during March and unavailable for use at sea.  The only
problem time for the program seems to be in May when three
program components (Broad-scale, Larval Process (Lough), and
Vital Rates) all will be at sea on overlapping cruises.  At that
time, Lough would use the NMFS 1-M frame and 3 16- bit
electronics systems.  Broad-scale would use Wiebe's 1-M frame and
12-bit  electronics, and Lough's 10-M frame and 12-bit
electronics.  The Vital Rates group would use URI's 1-M frame and
16-bit electronics  and the WHOI 10-M frame. The current lack of
an electronics package for that 10-M frame in this period is a
problem.  The pressure transducer on Lough's 12-bit electronics
unit needs to be checked to determine if its pressure range is
adequate for 500 m tows.

The Broad-scale cruises will use Lough's 1-M and 10-M frames and
16-bit electronics for January and February.  In March, Broad-
scale will use Wiebe's 1-M frame and the 12-bit electronics
systems from  Lough and Wiebe.  During April Lough's systems will
be used -  back-to-back with his cruises on OCEANUS.

An inventory of MOCNESS nets was estimated to be:

   System       Mesh    Group        Number
   MOC-1        335     NMFS-WH         9
                        NMFS-Nar        5
                        URI             9

                150     URI-Durbin      8
                        URI-Wishner     9

MOC-10                  NMFS            5 good, 2 to repair
                        WHOI            5-8 good and/or to be repaired 

An inventory of MOCNESS cod end buckets (for 1-M and 10-M) was 
estimated to be:

Wiebe 8
NMFS           12 (old, to have foam installed)
                8 with foam
URI            12


The minimum needed for the May period is 38 (allowing no spares). 

The conclusion is that one electronics system is still needed for
May and that purchasing of a few MOC-1 and MOC-10 nets, and a few
cod end buckets is needed.  All of the MOC-1 and MOC-10 buckets
should be lined with 150 mesh netting to allow them to be 
interchangeable.

The Broad Scale group, in its meeting on November 28, recommended 
that the breaking off and resumption of operations on cruises
both be logged as events in the event log.  It also recommended
that operations like CTD and Pump casts, which had been logged
with only a starting entry, now be logged with both a start and
end entry in the log.  The Committee agreed that both
recommendations should be adopted as standard protocol for event
logging.

The Broad Scale group had also recommended moving standard
stations 24 and 31, and adding a new station 40 - for reasons
summarized in the minutes of the meeting that were distributed to 
ggball.  The Committee agreed with these recommendations.

Scott Gallager has recently returned from a two week trip to
Japan, and described the current status of the Japanese GLOBEC
program.  The program has begun with funding from the Japanese
government, focusing on one of four original topic areas.  The 
four areas were for studies 1) in the northern Sea of Japan, 2)
in the southern Sea of Japan, 3) on Izu Bank, near Tokyo and the
confluence of the Kuroshio and Oyashio currents, where a lot of
up-welling results in increased productivity, and 4) of rings and
streamers associated with the Kuroshio extension, where increased
productivity has been observed and where fishing activity is very 
high in the rings and streamers.  Only the fourth topic area is
currently funded, although work in areas 2 and 3 is to be done by
instrumenting ferry boats that cross these areas.  Scott noted 
that the GLOBEC work is separate from a study of up-welling off
northern Japan in which Terry Joyce is involved with physical
oceanographers from the University of Tokyo.  The Japan GLOBEC 
work will begin at sea next June, and like our program, will have
alternating intensive years of effort.  It is unclear how much
collaboration will occur between Japanese GLOBEC and JAMSTEC. 
The program has at least three vessels available to it.  They 
would welcome other scientists (who have their own funding) to
take part in their cruises.  There also is an oceanographic
training vessel which makes an annual world-wide cruise.  Scott 
suggested that they consider coming to Georges Bank next spring
when our GLOBEC field effort will be ongoing.  The Japanese 
GLOBEC program is preparing an English language
document.describing the program.

Peter described two future meetings of interest to Georges Bank
GLOBEC investigators.  The first is a special theme session on
GLOBEC at next year's ICES science meeting - to be held in
Baltimore from Sept 25 - Oct 3.  The co-convenors are Peter and
Sven Sundby from the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen,
Norway.  A call for papers will be issued in mid-January.   The
session is a good place for work well-along-in-progress to be
presented. It offers a good preliminary outlet before for the
Ocean Sciences meeting in February 1998.  The second meeting, 
being held just prior to the ICES meeting, is focused on
recruitment processes and is being co-convened by Brian
Rothschild and Tom Osborne.  This meeting is for more finished 
work.  Announcement of this meeting have already been formally 
issued.

The meeting was adjourned at 3:30.