Report of the
U. S. GLOBEC Georges Bank Program Scientific Investigators' Workshop
16 - 18 October 1995

Introduction

The U.S. GLOBEC Northwest Atlantic Georges Bank Program is a large multi-disciplinary multi-year oceanographic effort which officially began field work in the spring of 1994. The proximate goal of the program is to understand the population dynamics of target species on the Bank - cod and haddock, and the copepods, Calanus finmarchicus and Pseudocalanus spp. - in terms of their coupling to the physical environment and their predators and prey. The ultimate goal is to be able to predict changes in the distribution and abundance of these species as a result of changes in their biotic and physical environment and to anticipate how their populations will respond to climate change. The U.S. GLOBEC research program is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation-Division of Ocean Sciences, and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-Office of Global Programs and National Marine Fisheries Service, and is a component of the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

Field work in 1994 involved eight U. S. GLOBEC funded cruises and a total of 81 days at sea (Table 1). A more intense field season followed in 1995 and involved twenty-four U. S. GLOBEC cruises and about 280 days at sea. The NOAA-Coastal Ocean Program's Georges Bank Predation Study conducted three cruises in 1994 and five cruises in 1995. Independent investigator D. Townsend lead a cruise to Georges Bank just prior to the onset of U. S. GLOBEC activities in 1994. Further there were three Canadian cruises (one each in 1993, 1994, and 1995) of five-to-eight-days duration for mooring deployments and hydrographic work from Browns Bank to the Northeast peak of Georges Bank.

Following the completion of the second field season, the third U. S. GLOBEC Georges Bank Program scientific investigators' workshop was held at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on 16-18 October 1995. The objectives were to enable the scientific investigators to describe their research activities to one another, to exchange data and information, and to work together toward developing the scientific products that will fulfill the program's goals and objectives.

The workshop was organized around four major themes:

Bank-wide physical and biological structures.
Water column stratification and its effects on biological distributions and processes.
The population dynamics of the target species.
Hot topics: unexpected findings/discussions or interesting tidbits.

Each of the sessions was a blend of physics, biology, and modeling work. Presentations and discussions were designed to improve our understanding of the coupling of physics and biology of the region. For each session there was a session chairman and two rapporteurs. After each session, an open discussion was held. These were guided by the Chairman of the session who asked particular investigators to summarize ideas or findings that were particularly pertinent to topics presented in the sessions. In addition, there was a final talk which focussed on the data management system and its role in providing a mechanism for program information, data access, and investigator interaction. A total of 66 presentations were made over the 2 e days of the workshop. (See Appendix 1 for the agenda.)

This workshop report is a compilation of the session summaries (prepared by the session Chairmen and the rapporteurs) and abstracts of the presentations (prepared by the presenters). Together these summarize the status of the work and are intended to facilitate meaningful collaborations between the investigators in the program. This report (along with the reports of each of the cruises) also will provide other scientists and managers, who have a direct interest in these research activities, with an overview of our work to date.