EXCO Minutes - May 10, 1996
U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank Executive Committee Meeting
Date: Friday, May 10, 1996 9:00 am-2:00 pm
Location: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Bigelow 217 Conference Room
Members present: Bob Beardsley, Cabell Davis, Ted Durbin, Mike
Fogarty, Greg Lough, David Mountain, Peter Wiebe
Members absent: Steve Bollens, Ann Bucklin, Dian Gifford, Dan Lynch
Guests: Donna Busch, Bob Groman
1. Planning for next SI meeting this fall.
This year's SI meeting is tentatively planned for October 16-25 so
that an extended period of time is available for data synthesis and
planning for the 1997 field season. The retreat type meeting will
take place at a place to be determined, such as Alton Jones or UNH
conference tower or MIT's conference facility south of Boston.
Process and modeling groups may plan to meet ahead of time to better
prepare for this meeting. As much data as possible would be
available on-line and the site would have to be network accessible.
2. The cost of incidental items incurred on the Endeavor. These
costs turned out to be less than expected and URI is no longer
requiring a purchase requisition prior to sailing or requesting
reimbursement for tools or PGR paper. The consensus was that this
was no longer an issue.
3. Status of 1996 funding for Bisagni, Durbin, Madin et. al.,
Mountain et. al., and Sullivan et. al. Some third year funding
was made available for these projects, although not as much as
requested. Also, funding for the sample analyses of the
ichthyoplankton in Poland will be funded by NMFS.
4. Revisit broad-scale station plan. After trying out two new
versions of a broad-scale station plan, it became clear that adding
61 Bongo stations for additional ichthyoplankton sampling was not
possible. However, adding Bongo stations halfway between the 39
standard stations was reasonable. Additional stations beyond these
39 + 38 stations could be made time permitting and was left to the
discretion of the chief scientist. Discussion also focussed on the
priorities given to the sampling at the stations. It was agreed
that the original 39 station priorities will not be changed and that
the new halfway point stations' priority is lower than the core 39
stations.
5. Talk at American Fisheries Society. Steve wanted to give a talk
at the American Fisheries Society about the GLOBEC Georges Bank
Program and all agreed that would be fine.
6. New protocol for molecular analysis for the 1 m2 MOCNESS 150 um
nets. Ann requested (via email) that the protocol for MOCNESS 1 be
modified to allow for molecular analysis of sub-samples. The
consensus was to allow the change, but people noted that the process
was becoming burdensome and that special care had to be taken to
keep the sample labelling correct. No further changes were to be
expected this year and that the protocol would have to be revisited
after the Phase II proposals were adjudicated.
7. Discuss pruning the paper mail distribution list. Peter
discussed a change in who on the paper mail distribution list
received what items. The list was getting quite long and everyone
did not need to receive all cruise reports. All agreed with the
change.
9. Integrating Management Structures of the GLOBEC NW Atlantic
Study and Coastal Ocean Program Georges Bank Predation Study. Since
the Coastal Ocean Program (COP) will be funding the NOAA part of
GLOBEC, Don Scavia requested that there be formal ties with the
GLOBEC work and management structure. Specifically, Don requested
that the chair of EXCO serve on COP's Project Management Oversight
Team. Peter agreed to do this and EXCO agreed. It was noted that
good SI to SI communications already exist between the projects and
that participation in the SI workshops continue. It was also
suggested that links be added to our home page to COP's home page
and data. Bob G. will take care of this after receiving the URL's
from Mike. Mike informed Bob G. that they use the Oracle DBMS.
Bob G. will be in touch with Brian Kaminer about writing a JGOFS
method to access data from an Oracle database.
Also discussed was the need to review the membership of EXCO after
the decisions about Phase II proposals have been announced. It was
agreed that the October SI meeting would be a good time and place to
decide the EXCO membership.
10. Data submission and data management: how should EXCO work to
get people to submit their data on a timely basis. Bob G.
distributed a preliminary summary of data either currently on the
system or expected to be. More items were added to the list at the
meeting. Bob will update the summary and redistribute to EXCO via
email (after he returns from his trip to Hamburg Germany for a data
management workshop). It will then be sent to ggball for further
input and comments.
Bob G. was also asked to add home page links to the VPR home page
and Dan Lynch's site. He was also asked to consider how to add
sound to video clips in order to provide narrations to the on-line
movies. Bob G. and Peter reminded people that a PC running Windows
3.11 can be made into a JGOFS data server. So a Unix based machine
is not the only way of getting one's data into the system.
Peter mentioned that he is continuing to pursue ways on enhancing
the display capabilities and the collaboratory concept. He has meet
with representatives from SGI to see if they would be interested in
preparing a proposal with him to further these goals.
11. Article for Sea Technology. Peter will be writing an article
for Sea Technology about our program.
12. Few comments about DSR volume. Peter and Bob B. reported that
all manuscripts have been in since February. John Milliman reports
that there are no "stoppers" yet and expects the Deep Sea Research
special edition to be out this Fall. The companion CDROM containing
video clips, data, and images needs to be put together. Bob G.
will be responsible for this.
13. Ship scheduling. Peter shared a copy of a memo from Don Moller
reporting on the significant ship scheduling difficulties for April,
May, and June of 1997. There is nothing we can do about this now,
but additional work on this item will be required once the Phase II
projects are decided. As a point of information, David pointed out
that in addition to the NOAA contribution to the GLOBEC work on
Georges Bank, the Albatross and Delaware are scheduled for about 50
days to do COP Predation Studies on Georges Bank.
14. Mike reported (from information from Liz Clark) that there is a
move to move COP to NOS instead of staying in OAR. Since Peter was
invited to attend a NOAA partnership meeting later in May, Peter
will take this opportunity to discuss this with Don Scavia.
15. Fisherman project. Peter reported that after the recent
Fisherman Forum, he, Ann, Bob B. and David were asked to submit a
proposal for a small pilot proposal to fund two fishing boats to
perform far field measurements for our program. Data will be
collected with several instruments including surface drifters, CTD,
and bongo nets (0 to 200 meters). It was suggested that the bongo
net tows go to the bottom rather than stopping at 200 meters. A
drifter with an echo sounder may be added after it goes through a
testing phase. These data would be added to our data system and
fisherman would be encouraged to access these data for their own
needs.
16. Announcement of Opportunity. Mike mentioned that there is an
AO for west coast modeling work as a start on U.S. GLOBEC's
California Current project. The PI's will be writing an
implementation plan.
17. TALC meeting. Charlie Miller, via email, reported the
following:
Please let the board know that TALC is planning a meeting for all
interested scientists during the week of 8 January 1997. This is to
overlap with a meeting of EUTASC. It will be a kickoff meeting for
the "Year of Calanus". General sessions for all students of North
Atlantic Calanus will last about 2.5 days. The venue is Copenhagen.
Conveners of the meeting are Roger Harris and Charlie Miller. There
are no funds for this meeting. People interested in attending will
have from about 1 June to find support for attending. We are trying
to reduce costs as much as possible. We hope that 10-20 North
American participants can make the journey. We are aware that
transatlantic travel in January has its drawbacks, but the EU group
has extensive reasons for choosing these dates.
Prepared by: Bob Groman, May 16, 1996