Present: Bob Beardsley, Ted Durban, Charlie Flagg, Bob Groman, Greg Lough, Jeff Runge, Peter Wiebe
Absent: Dian Gifford, Jamie Pringle, David Mountain, David Townsend
Visitor: Andy Beet
U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank Phase IV was originally planned as one AO. But the panel and program managers decided to hold back some funding so that basin-scale analyses and modeling could receive more attention later. Most model work supported in the current phase were for the local Georges Bank region. Thus a final Phase IV AO is in the draft stage now. EXCO reviewed the draft document and suggested several changes. The document will next be reviewed by the U.S. GLOBEC Scientific Steering Committee, which will be meeting on 6 and 7 November.
We reviewed the draft agenda and the proposed talk titles. The first morning, Tuesday, the meeting will begin at 10:00am. After a short introduction, principal investigators of the five scientific projects will present a brief (20 minute) overview of their individual lead projects. Five (5) minutes will be allowed for discussion after each presentation. The scientific talks will then follow. The talks were ordered so that the fundamental physical oceanography presentations would appear first, starting Tuesday afternoon. The remaining combined biology, physical oceanography, and modeling talks would continue through the end of Tuesday and be completed Wednesday afternoon. It was noted that two of the 25 talks listed belonged as part of the early morning lead presentations. We accommodated a request to avoid a Wednesday presentation by moving it to Tuesday. Wednesday afternoon will begin plenary cross-group discussions followed by evening breakout sessions, after dinner. Thursday morning will have working group and other special reports, followed by a final plenary session. The meeting ends after lunch, although meeting rooms will be available in the afternoon for any groups that still wish to meet.
B. Beardsley noted that a collection of U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank papers was now ready to be published in a special section of JGR. There was a suggestion that we make available CDrom copies of JGR PDF-formatted articles at the November meeting. This special section with sixteen papers, edited by B. Beardsley, P. Smith and C. Lee, has a number of papers about the physics and biology of Georges Bank that are relevant to the synthesis effort. B. Groman wondered if abstracts could be put on-line. He will follow up on this.
EXCO wants to encourage people to bring pre-prints and reprints of their recent papers to the November meeting as well.
Bob was asked about the logistics for an evening reception. He will contact Whispering Pines to find out.
It was asked whether Peter Smith would contribute at the November meeting. EXCO suggested giving formal invitation to Brad DeYoung, Peter Smith, Charlie Hannah, and Erica Head. However, the timing is short, so the invitation may be to attend next year's meeting.
There was a discussion of results comparing the longevity of over-wintering versus active stocks of Calanus finmarchicus. Over-wintering stocks can survive without eating much longer than active individuals. Recent work in the Northeast Atlantic shows that the length of overwintering is temperature dependent with animals in colder water (0 to 1 C) lasting hundreds of days, but those at 5 C a much shorter time (60 90 days). At 7 or 8 C time to death would appear to be only 20 to 40 days. Active stock life times are not as temperature dependent. There are ramifications to these findings for the Gulf of Maine population since it implies there are more generations than previously supposed. If the over-wintering stock only lasts 40 to 90 days, then replacement stock may be coming from elsewhere. There was some thought that Gulf of Maine diapausing population can live much longer than implied by the metabolic rate measurements. This was thought to be a good item for discussion at the upcoming PI meeting.
There was also a discussion about the developing story on Calanus on the Bank and why 1998 was a good year class for haddock, but not for cod. D. Mountain suggests in a paper under development that for haddock it appears strongly linked to a lack of wind stress. Fewer haddock eggs were produced, but more survived. It was noted that cod egg production for the most part takes place on the Northeast Peak. But haddock egg production has recently been observed to take place there and also on the western end of the Bank, as it did before stocks were reduced to low levels. This may provide the haddock with an advantage. NMFS surveys have shown remarkably strong haddock recruitment in last couple of years, which may be linked to the recent periods of negative NAO indicies. It may also be linked to earlier than normal spring blooms as evidenced in a recent Nature paper [Platt, T., C. Fuentes-Yaco, K.T. Frank. 2003. Spring algal bloom and larval fish survival. Nature, 423,398-399]. It was noted that L. Buckley is trying to link early hatch dates (birth dates from the fall survey) to recruitment. This is another topic that should be discussed at the PI meeting.
P. Wiebe will also present EXCO's recommendations about the AO to the SSC.
Peter was familiar with the group's participation at the upcoming winter AGU meeting. But he was not aware of who was participating at the upcoming Hawaii ASLO/TOS meeting. It was suggested an e-mail request be sent to the investigators to find out who is contributing to ASLO/TOS.
There needs to be a plan put forth for the Coastal observing initiative to compete with the other two. It was recognized that there needs to be better representation at this meeting. There is a COOP meeting to be held soon in Chicago. There also needs to be some serious planning between now and January 1. One idea put forward was the study of nutrient fluxes at the shelf breaks and productivity on the continental shelves. It was also noted that an infrastructure including model systems are needed to be in place. For our region, FVCOM has the necessary elements. Several kinds of instrumentation would be needed in place between Georges Bank to the mid-Atlantic Bight, including some long term moorings, AUVs, gliders, etc. It would be very useful to nail down how nutrients get from offshore onto the shelf. Productivity and carbon flux questions could be addressed as science-based issues. B. Beardsley was going to continue discussions in the next weeks.
It was noted that the Northeast Observing System (NEOS) is GOMOOS affiliated, and while not science-driven, is still important to many researchers. Science needs the data available through GOMOOS to validate their models.
The meeting ended about 1500.