GLOBEC Georges Bank Executive Committee Meeting September 15, 1997 Coastal Institute Building URI Attending: P. Wiebe, L. Madin, S. Gallagar, J. Bisagni, T. Durbin, G. Lough, D. Mountain, K. Wishner, R. Groman, D. Busch The meeting began at 10:00 AM. Peter asked for additions to the agenda. Discussion of the need for a COP representative on the committee and of a letter by Peter to UNOLS concerning vessel needs for next year were added to the agenda. I. Future Scientific Meetings The Phase III open meeting: Charlie Flagg had raised concern about possible dates of the proposed Phase III meeting because he is organizing this year's Middle Atlantic Bight Physical Oceanography Meeting (MABPOM) on 6-7 November. The options for the Phase III meeting were the 30-31 Oct (Thursday-Friday) or 3-4 Nov (Monday - Tuesday). Since some investigators indicated an inability to attend on the earlier dates and the later option would not directly conflict with the MABPOM meeting, the Committee voted for the 3-4 Nov dates. For location the options were a hotel around Boston, the NE Aquarium, UMass South Dartmouth or the Mass Maritime Academy. The first two allowed easier access for those flying into Boston, but could be more difficult for local attendees (e.g., parking, traffic) and be more expensive for everyone. UMass would not be a 'neutral' location - which, while not critical, was felt by some to be desirable if possible - and does not have a large facility available. The Mass Maritime has new, larger facilities (size was a problem identified after the last meeting there). The Committee voted for the Mass Maritime Academy location for the meeting. ICES/Baltimore (Sept 1997): Peter indicated that the ICES session should be a significant event for the program, with many good presentations and posters. It provides an international exposure for our results and offers the opportunity to interact with our European colleagues. AGU/ASLO Ocean Sciences (Feb 1998): Peter passed out the description of the special session scheduled for the meeting - which is entitled "Climate variability, fisheries resources, and the dynamics of plankton populations in the Georges Bank/Gulf of Maine/Scotian Shelf region of the northwest Atlantic". The deadline for submission of abstracts is Oct 9 (by e-mail or hard copy) or Oct 16 if submitted by the Web site. An announcement will be sent out to ggball to remind them of this session and the deadlines. The intent is to publish another volume or two of manuscripts - similar to the DSR special issue. DSR has expressed interest in publishing another volume. Continental Shelf Research is another option - although it also is Elsevier Science LTD. The papers presented at ICES and/or at AGU/ALSO would be logical contributions. An announcement will be sent to ggball about a future volume, with suggested submission dates for manuscripts. A final meeting note was that Peter has been invited to give a presentation about GLOBEC at the AAAS meeting in Philadelphia the week after the Ocean Sciences meeting. He will contact investigators for input. Mini data analysis/synthesis workshops: Some support has been received by the program to support junior researchers and students to attend the ICES or other meetings. These funds could also support future small meetings for data analysis and/or synthesis related to particular topics. EXCO will need to consider, with input from ggball, how to best use these funds. II. Field Work in 1998 The committee considered four suggestions made by Ann Bucklin for Broad Scale protocols: 1. Have a test station soon after leaving the dock - to insure everything is working and people see the operation. EXCO feels it is a good idea, but should be at the discretion of the Chief Scientist. 2. MOCNESS electronics troubleshooting - need some additional training for the technicians who operate the MOCNESS. A one day course on MOCNESS troubleshooting will be arranged sometime before the first cruise - probably in December. 3. Technical support for the MOC-10: this past year the nets were left on the frame between crusies, and routine maintenance was not always done. For the coming year EXCO feels that better planning will need to be done to insure pre- and post-cruise work gets done. 4. MOCNESS protocol should be rewritten to have faster payout and haul in speeds on deep stations. This issue will be addressed at a meeting of the Broad Scale PI's, probably in early December. Equipment requirements and suppliers: Equipment needed and supplier in months with cruises scheduled Month N J F M A M J O D MOC 1 N ( W or U ) N N W W Pump U U U U U U MOC 10 N W W W N N CTD N N N N N N Bongos N N N N N N Green Bomber W W W Reeve Net where N is NMFS, W is WHOI and U is URI. MOC-10 nets 8 WHOI 3 need repair 8 NMFS all need repair need to check if the nets are worth repairing MOC buckets need to check the count. Need 20-25 for a cruise MOC flow meters need to check the count need to calibrate the flow meters Electronic systems URI - 1 16 bit NMFS - 3 " WHOI - 1 " since no overlapping cruises, these should not be a problem Donna will contact the PI's and collate the information on the instrument systems, and provide the results to Peter. Broad Scale Station 32: A recommendation was made to give this station a higher priority since skipping it creates a rather large hole in the central portion of the bank. EXCO agreed that the priority should be changed to priority 2. Ted Durbin will decide if a pump should actually be done at the station. III. NE Pacific GLOBEC meeting: The Northeast Pacific GLOBEC program has begun, with initial proposals for retrospective analyses, modelling and prototype monitoring being funded. The program had a first meeting of the PI's in Seattle on August 18-19. David Mountain and Steve Bollens attended, representing the Georges Bank program. They provided an overview of the Georges Bank program, including how the program is organized and operates. IV. Methods for serving zooplankton data via GLOBEC/JGOFS directly from an Oracle database Peter Garrahan and Bob Bowen (both of URI) have been instrumental in establishing an Oracle database for the URI GLOBEC zooplankton data and making it available through the WEB, and both sat in on this session. Bob Groman reviewed the underlying requirements and philosophy of the GLOBEC/JGOFS database management system. He then indicated how this system will connect directly to the URI Oracle zooplankton database. This will be a separate path to the database, and not replace the present access via Durbin's web page. Bob hopes to have this ability implemented within a month. The committee discussed the need to get other taxonomic data sets similarly available. A mini-workshop for PI's who have this data was suggested in early December to expedite getting these data sets into the database. V. EXCO Minutes The committee agreed the minutes should be posted on the web page. VI. Review of policies on cruise reports and timeliness of reporting Three reports for cruises from this past season still have not been submitted. The committee felt that the need for timeliness should be stressed to all Chief Scientists. To a large extent the report should be able to be finished when the ship arrives at the dock. No significant effort for post-cruise input should be needed. The Chief Scientist's package contains a summary of what is required for the cruise report. VII. COP representative EXCO has not had a representative from the COP Georges Bank program since Mike Fogarty went to U of Maryland. The committee should discuss this with COP to see if another representative can be identified. VIII. Letters to funding agencies by EXCO members The committee agreed that, to avoid any confusion, any letters about programmatic issues from committee members to the program managers or related NSF/NOAA offices should specifically indicate whether they are writing for themselves or representing the committee. The meeting adjourned at 3:10.