Professor J. H. S. Blaxter (UK), the Editor of the JMS, is looking over papers from the "Salmon Symposium" (see the story on the Symposium in this issue) — to be published in December 1997— as his final "big-push" before retirement from the post on 31 October. Dr Niels Daan (Netherlands) will be his successor. There will be more on this change in the next issue of this newsletter.
Stephen J. Smith (Canada), one of the two JMS Assistant Editors, is also retiring from his post on 31 October, and his combination of statistical and fish-stock management expertise will be very hard to replace.
Ninety-nine papers (excluding submissions from ICES Symposia) were received in the period July 1996 _ July 1997: 12 more than in the previous year and a record over the 70 years of the Journal's existence. Most are in the refereeing/rewrite system though 14 have been rejected to date. The Editors used to find that 10_12 weeks was enough time to allow for refereeing, but this is now 12_15 routinely, and it is much harder to get referees than it used to be.
Susan Lord of Academic Press reports that it is still cheaper to re-key texts than to take them as disks or e-mail. Academic are, however, leading-edge dealers in the WWW wave with some 190 journals open to a potential audience of four million readers spread across universities, companies, and institutes. The (London) Times Environmental Correspondent has picked up JMS Contents and featured some aspects in two columns since January.
Dr Lesley Rickards (UK), Chairman of the Working Group on Marine Data Management, reports that the WG held a successful meeting earlier this year at the US National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) at its new location in Silver Spring, Maryland. Many useful discussions were held with staff of the NODC who also provided helpful presentations on several topics. Dr Syd Levitus, who heads the project IOC Global Oceanographic Data Archive and Rescue (GODAR), gave a valuable update on it. Since this project began in 1990, a substantial volume of bathythermograph, water bottle, and CTD data have been rescued and made available to the scientific community. The WG also assessed the biological data likely to be available, in particular that on chlorophyll and plankton.
The WG reviewed the flow of data to the ICES Oceanographic Data Centre _ as it has regularly over the last few years _ with a view to assessing problems and improving data submission. Although it has been a record year in terms of the number of profiles submitted (more than 51000) and the ICES Data Policy is working well, there are still some problem areas that are not showing any signs of improvement. These will be looked into soon.
During the year, some members of the WG have taken part in an intercomparison of their quality-control methods for CTD data. There are several good reasons for such an exercise, including identification of bottle-necks in data flow, avoiding duplication of data handling between data centres, encouraging a common level of data documentation generated by originators and data centres, providing a basis of recommended procedures for data handling by data centres and users alike, and increasing the possibilities of learning from one another.
World Wide Web pages for the WG have been created. Although these are still under development, a homepage has been set up (http://www.pol.ac.uk/bodc/midmwg.html), with links to data centres in the ICES region. In addition, the various guidelines on data management developed by the WG are included.
Other topics considered included: reviewing the status of taxonomic coding systems, reviewing computer technologies available for data management, and analysing the Cruise Summary Report parameter codes with a view to updating them.
Dr Lesley Rickards has played a major role in the production of EDMED — The European Directory of Marine Environmental Data. It contains descriptions of 2300 data sets held within 49 centres in 12 European countries. Plans are being developed to extend coverage to a further four countries. Online access through http://www.nbi.ac.ulm/bode/edmed.html.
John Ramster (UK) has become Editor for the present in succession to Ed Thomasson, ICES Information Officer and Librarian. Ed writes elsewhere in this issue about the development of the newsletter since 1983 when he was appointed Editor. Many participants who have attended ASCs and Symposia can vouch personally for Ed's tenacity in securing copy from them. Most people will know by now that Ed is fighting cancer; and the best wishes of his friends in the ICES "community" _ a special word to Ed as you will see in his article _ have been going to him and his family for some time now.
Apart from the two ICES Symposia already held in 1997 and described in this newsletter, an International Symposium on "Recruitment Dynamics of Exploited Marine Populations: Physical_Biological Interactions", will be convened on 22_24 September 1997, immediately prior to the ICES Annual Science Conference. It will be held on the campus of the Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland. The Symposium is dedicated to the memory of the late Professor R. J. H. Beverton. Dr David Cushing (UK), renowned for his pioneering research on recruitment processes, will give the opening address. For further information contact Co-Convener Professor Michael J. Fogarty, University of Maryland System Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, PO Box 38, Solomons, Maryland 20688, USA; e-mail: fogarty@cbl. umces.edu.
"Brackish Water Ecosystems" is scheduled for 25_28 August 1998 in Helsinki, Finland, and will bring together scientists studying the great brackish water areas such as the Baltic, Black, and White Seas and Chesapeake Bay. The Convener is Professor Pentti Mälkki, Institute of Marine Research, PO Box 33, 00931 Helsinki, Finland; e-mail: malkki@fimr.fi.
"Marine Benthos Dynamics: Environmental and Fisheries Impacts" will be held from 5 to 7 October 1998 on Crete. It will provide a forum for the presentation of results of research into the effects of fisheries on the benthic ecosystem. The full co-sponsorship has not been decided but will include the Institute of Marine Biology of Crete and the General Secretariat for Research and Technology of the Greek Ministry of Development. Information may be obtained from Co-Convener Professor A. Eleftheriou, Institute of Marine Biology of Crete, PO Box 2214, 71003 Iraklion, Crete, Greece; e-mail: embc@imbc.gr.
"Confronting Uncertainty in the Evaluation and Implementation of Fisheries Management Systems" will be convened from 16 to 19 November 1998 in Cape Town, South Africa. It will be co-sponsored by FAO and ICLARM. Details of the sessions and other information will be circulated in the near future. Contact-point until further notice: Co-Convener Dr T. K. Stokes, CEFAS, Lowestoft Laboratory, Lowestoft, Suffolk NR33 0HT, England, UK; e-mail: kevinstokes@compuserve.com OR t.k.stokes@cefas.co.uk.
"Ecosystem Effects of Fishing" will be jointly organized with the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research and held from 16 to 19 March 1999 in Montpellier, France. A major goal of the Symposium will be to provide a global synthesis of what is known about the impacts of fishing on the marine ecosystem. Professor Henrik Gislason (Denmark) and Dr Michael M. Sinclair (Canada) are the Co-Conveners. Additional information may be obtained from Henrik Gislason, University of Copenhagen, c/o Danish Institute for Fisheries Research, DK-2920 Charlottenlund, Denmark; e-mail: hg@dfu.min.dk.
"The Population Dynamics of Calanus in the North Atlantic: Results from the Trans-Atlantic Study of Calanus finmarchicus" will be convened from 24 to 27 August 1999 in Tromsø, Norway. The Symposium will aim to sum up the results of TASC, couple them to related studies, and find directions for future research. The Co-Conveners are Professor Kurt Tande (Norway) and Professor C. B. Miller (USA). For further information contact: TASC Programme Secretary Tone Falkenhaug, Norwegian College of Fishery Science, University of Tromsø, N_9037 Tromsø, Norway; e-mail: tonef@nfh.uit.no.
"The Environmental Effects of Mariculture" is scheduled for 13_16 September 1999 in St Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada. The Co-Conveners are Dr Maurice Héral (France) and Dr D. Wildish (Canada). Dr Héral may be contacted at CREMA CNRS-IFREMER, L'Houmeau, B P 5, F-17137 L'Houmeau Cedex, France; e-mail: mheral@ifremer.fr.
"100 Years of Science under ICES" will be held from 1 to 3 August 2000 in Helsinki, Finland, with Dr Emory D. Anderson (USA) as the Convener (see "Preparing for the ICES Centenary").