Meeting of the U.S. National Committee for the Census of Marine Life

August 18-19, 2005

Alaska SeaLife Center

301 Railway Avenue

Seward, Alaska 99664

Summary of the Meeting

The U.S. National Committee (USNC) of the Census of Marine Life (CoML) held its biannual meeting August 18-19, 2005 at the Alaska Sealife Center in Seward Alaska.

Members of the USNC paid tribute to the contributions of Penny Dalton in the establishment and success of the USNC, and expressed hope for her future involvement in the program. Daphne Fautin, agreed to extend her Chairmanship of the USNC for an additional year. Members also selected two additional candidates to invite to the USNC beginning 2006. Once accepted, those new members will be announced.

Participants discussed the significant growth in the program since its last meeting. U.S. contributions into CoML activities are now documented at near $76M, a $10M increase since April 2005. These numbers do not include 2005 figures reported by the international field projects, or the 30% in-kind contributions estimated by the CoML Secretariat. In addition, the USNC has secured another sponsor for its administrative activities. The USNC is now supported by grants by the Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Office of Ocean Exploration; and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The USNC continues to seek additional funding for implementing activities, such as a workshop for 2006 and technical support for serving data into OBIS.

The USNC discussed the issue paper prepared for the international Scientific Steering Committee on “Developing a framework for 2010 CoML synthesis”. Participants considered many elements of the paper useful to U.S. research efforts, but voiced significant concern with CoML engaging in evaluating the performance of management activities. The USNC reaffirmed the appropriate role of CoML in the U.S. as assessing biodiversity and changes in biodiversity alone. The recommendation was made that the SSC remove references of “performance indicators” from the 2010 synthesis proposals.

Principal investigators of the Arctic Ocean Diversity (ArcOD) and Natural Geography In Shore Areas (NaGISA) projects of CoML provided informative presentations to participants of the meeting and the Science Director for the Alaska Sealife Center and staff provided a tour of the research facilities and programs. The welcomed guests to the meeting included: Russ Hopcroft (ArcOD), Bodil Bloom (ArcOD), Rolf Gradinger (ArcOD), Brenda Konar (NaGISA), Tylan Schrock (Executive Director, Alaska Sealife Center), and Shannon Atkinson (Science Director, Alaska Sealife Center). These presentations resulted in informed discussions and the identification of additional program activities.

The three working groups of the USNC reported on progress implementing the action items identified at the November 2004 and April 2005 meetings, and participants discussed further actions to be taken before the next meeting in Spring 2006. The significant outcomes of the discussions include:

Research and Assessment

The USNC will proceed with planning for a workshop on the role of biodiversity in maintaining ecosystem function in 2006. Verbal agreements for 65% of the necessary funding have been obtained. Paul Sandifer, Jo-Ann Leong, and Lew Incze agreed to co-chair this workshop, to revise a proposal for the remaining funding, and to select a steering committee in September 2005.

The program continues to strengthen its relationship with the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration, and is actively working to collaborate on research priorities, data management, tracking research funding, and outreach to the research community.

The USNC has been successful in having CoML identified in 2006 calls for proposal with two federal agencies, providing potential access to $16M in research funds ($13M 2006, $3M 2006-2010).

Predictive Capacity

USNC members continued to raise the concerns, voiced at the April 2005 to the OBIS Portal manager, regarding the Ocean Biogeographical Information System (OBIS). This in large part is a response to federal agency representatives, who continue to express to USNC members questions regarding the utility of OBIS for federal applications. The USNC views this as a barrier to obtaining federal support at present. Guests to the meeting additionally voiced concern that data deposited in OBIS has an uncertain future past 2010, and that only some data type collected under CoML projects will be available through the portal. Thus, principal investigators remain reluctant to deposit datasets collected under projects. USNC members expressed concern that little project data is currently served through OBIS and discussed how this confounds useful demonstrations for potential sponsors. The USNC decided to forward a request to the OBIS IC to:

Publish and advertise a clear statement of: Mission, Users, and Products, to address questions related to expected outcomes for funding support;

Identify mechanisms to encourage principal investigators to populate OBIS with CoML project data and generate some sample products from that data;

Prepare a demonstration proposal for a 2-3 year project on a topic of long-term significance to federal agencies (if OBIS desires U.S. federal support).

Participants discussed two potential demonstration projects for OBIS that could demonstrate utility to federal agencies – collaborating with the database of biological diversity being developed for the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and applying a regional database to meet the needs of ecosystem-based management in the Gulf of Maine. These ideas will be transmitted to the OBIS IC, while the USNC will explore the willingness of existing partners.

Participants also discussed the value of a workshop of potential U.S. user groups, but decided that the initial user requirements study (by ESRI through Duke University) and some demonstrated products were needed prior to moving forward on this idea.

The USNC decided to undertake efforts to raise awareness with the NOAA Science Advisory Board and the interagency Joint Subcommittee on Ocean Science and Technology, about the need (and desire of the academic community) to have biological information as an integral component of the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS). Participants discussed that while this is a topic of discussion within the Data Management and Communications (DMAC) of IOOS, little else has been mentioned by the federal agencies and it is not clear that high-level commitments have been made on this issue.

Education and Outreach

The USNC postponed discussion of a number of education agenda items, given that some working group members were not present to facilitate informed discussions.

Participants discussed the success of the three CoML presentations during a luncheon at Capital Hill Oceans Week 2005. Two USNC members were joined by a graduate student in this panel that provided an overview of the CoML and highlighted some of the policy-relevant science to federal agencies. This presented a great opportunity to reach a large number of Congressional staff at one time, in order to build direct support for CoML research and support for the external research budgets of federal funding agencies. The USNC has already begun to discuss opportunities to engage in the 2006 event being planned.

USNC members considered the establishment of a graduate or post-graduate fellowship program to build support and capacity for CoML, as well as to address the taxonomic impediment in the long term. Participants recognized that this could be a relatively small investment for a significant payoff. There was broad support for the idea and members agreed to explore a number of mechanisms including: existing fellow programs that could be expanded to CoML topics, existing grants that require internships as a condition, and new funding sources for a targeted program.

The next meeting of the USNC will take place in Washington, DC in spring 2006. Invited participants to the next meeting will include representatives of several federal agencies, sponsors, non-governmental organizations and industry.