ICES/GLOBEC Newsletter

This issue of the Newsletter is being produced to coincide with the first Open Science meeting of the International GLOBEC programme in Paris from 17-20 March. The launch of the programme into a new phase of implementation is very welcome, as is wider recognition of its contribution to sustainable exploitation and environmental management of marine life.

The significance of plankton for fisheries was not invented by the GLOBEC programme and the need to understand the physical and chemical factors which cause variability in marine production has been a major theme for ICES since it was founded at the beginning of the century. Because of its history, membership and role in both fisheries advice and research coordination, ICES has a particular responsibility to show how new science can actually be applied to produce better management. That is the main theme of current work under the Cod and Climate Change programme. The new chairman of this programme introduces himself on p 6.

This Newsletter contains a mixture of past, present and future, for which I am grateful to all the contributors. The next issue will come out in time for the 1998 ICES Annual Science Conference in Lisbon and will provide a means of getting your views on the future development of the programme or on exciting new science out to a wide audience. Please use it and send me your thoughts - long, short, even half-baked.

My apologies to TASC Newsletter readers, suffering deja vu with the report on the 1997 ICES/GLOBEC Theme Session. As compensation you have a short report on the 1998 TASC meeting

The GLOBEC projects in the North Atlantic (i.e. the Georges Bank Program, Mare Cognitum, TASC, Canadian GLOBEC, and other national and related programs are studying the physics and biology of banks and shelf seas, and their interaction with the oceanic region. These projects are designed in part to address the question of how global climate change may affect the distribution, abundance, and production of animals in the sea. Zooplankton and ichthyoplankton (fish larvae) are the focus because they form the principal links between the phytoplankton and higher trophic levels, and fish stocks in particular. These research efforts are therefore centered on the dynamics of zooplankton and larval fish populations in the respective areas and are yielding new insights into the coupling between physical and biological processes in the regions.

The purpose of this session was to provide a forum for presentation of studies of 1) biological and physical rate processes, 2) spatial and temporal changes in physical and biological properties of the region, and 3) modeling efforts which integrate the biological and physical characteristics of the region. Special emphasis was on determination of the parameters relevant to the population dynamics of target species and the results of modeling the dynamics of these species in the study areas. This was the first opportunity for the GLOBEC work being conducted simultaneously on both sides of the North Atlantic to be presented in a coordinated session of talks and posters. It proved to be a very effective way for investigators from each of the respective regions to present their work to the community at-large and to each other.

This report will highlight the session, provide a summary of some of the new findings that were presented during the session, present the rationale for selecting the 'best paper' in the session, and discuss some of the ideas for future GLOBEC directions that resulted from the presentations and discussions.

This Theme Session touched on a number of important issues concerning the current state of knowledge of the dynamics of animal populations in the respective study sites. They gave rise to several general observations which can be listed in bullet fashion:

• A large number of the contributions to this session were focused on zooplankton, as was expected, since zooplankton are a major, but not exclusive, part of the GLOBEC program.
• The concept of on-shore transport of plankton fueling the production of the shelves was given added support through both field observations and modeling.
• Coupled physical/biological models have reached a stage of development where their application to fundamental and unresolved problems of distribution and dispersal of the species selected for study is resulting in realistic solutions.

There was a very good representation of the U.S. GLOBEC Program within this Theme Session, and the presentations were of high quality.

Newly Recognized Predators/Competitors on Georges Bank: Planktonic hydroids have recently been identified as potential predators on cod larvae on Georges Bank or their strong competitors for food resources. Horizontal and vertical distribution patterns are controlled by physical processes, especially in the well-mixed bank areas, and experimental data suggest that mortality of cod larvae may increase by a factor of three due to observed in situ concentrations of hydroids. It was hypothesized that tidally induced turbulence on the shallow portions of the Bank allows these normally benthic predators to adapt to planktonic life, a shift in habitat with significance for the predator-prey regimes pertinent to cod and haddock larvae.

Reproductive Biology of Calanus finmarchicus: Some of the contributed papers on the reproductive biology of C. finmarchicus demonstrated a high degree of flexibility in egg production, possibly driven by a hierarchy of environmental variables. Although gradients in the timing of reproduction occur on a meso-scale, once the reproduction has commenced, the population's egg production is driven by the female abundance. One observation was that female C. finmarchicus under optimal conditions is able to produce up to three clutches of eggs per day. It was also evident that females can start spawning eggs in advance of the spring bloom. A synthesis of the quantitative aspects of the species reproductive biology covering its distribution range is urgently needed to ensure further progress of coupling the physical-biological models.

Application of New Technology: The theme session demonstrated the apparent success in implementation of new technology in areas such as genetics and behaviour. For example, the Video Plankton Recorder (VPR) provided a data set that allowed the integration of physical and biological data so that linkages between Gulf of Maine and off-shore Slope Water populations prior to the start of the spring production cycle became evident. Further progress in coupling physics and biology at small scales depends on our ability to develop new systems to visualize the 3D observational field. The power of new technology in genetics was demonstrated in determining the identity of two closely related copepods, Pseudocalanus moultoni, and P. newmani, which show quite distinctive distributions in the Georges Bank Study area. Being able to determine their individual distributions makes it possible to estimate their impact and production in this and other regions in the North Atlantic.

New Realism in Modeling: The session demonstrated that numerical circulation models and coupled physical-biological models are now becoming very powerful analytical tools for interpreting plankton growth, transport, and distributions. Even though such models have been used for several years, the new aspect is that the models now are used with more realistic initial and boundary conditions. As an example, the vertical distribution of animals in the water column is an important determinant in model results and the field data must be adequate to establish realistic initial conditions and to provide a basis for evaluating model outcomes. Better initial and boundary conditions, in turn, enable model results to be used analytically and foster the use the models for testing hypotheses. For example, the coupled zooplankton models indicated that, except perhaps for a small portion of Wilkinson Basin, the Calanus population of the Gulf of Maine is not independently sustainable, but relies on transport from outside. Several other papers considered the idea that the shelf regions are supplied with Calanus finmarchicus from adjacent deep-sea areas. This was an dealt with in papers considering zooplankton populations in the Barents Sea, the Norwegian shelf, the North Sea, and the North American shelf. The model work, together with the field observations, represents a substantial change in the paradigm for source populations to Georges Bank and the time-scale for population re-supply in this region, and it represents a unification in thinking about the dynamics of Calanus across the North Atlantic Ocean.

Together with the developed tropho-dynamic models including fish larvae and juveniles, we now see these achievements as a major contribution to one of the core activities in GLOBEC-International.

Regional versus Local Physical Forcing: An important issue in the general understanding of the physics and biology on Georges Bank is whether changes seen on the Bank are due to local forcing or more climatically determined regional or global forcing. Moored measurements of the water flowing into the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank system indicated significant inter-annual changes in the water properties that were qualitatively similar to changes in water properties observed on the Bank during the GLOBEC studies. The indication is that significant variability originated from regional rather than local forcing, and that advection of properties through the study area boundaries is important to understanding changes occurring on Georges Bank. At the same time, other measurements indicate that the dominant seasonal heating of the Bank waters is controlled by the local heat flux, with advection playing only a secondary role.

Frontal Upwelling: Dye measurements at the base of the shelf/Slope Water front in the middle Atlantic Bight revealed the upwelling of water within the front. This is believed to be driven by the buoyancy flux within the bottom boundary layer at the foot of the front. The dye injected at the bottom was observed in the same density water within the front, 40 meters shallower and about 10 km away from the injection location. The implication is that this upwellling mechanism could provide an advective source of nutrients for enhanced production within the front. This upwelling mechanism may have general applicability at shelf fronts around the world.

GLOBEC activities are making very good progress on the national and regional level. The challenge now is to develop the basin-scale component of the North Atlantic GLOBEC Program. It is increasingly apparent in several parts of the North Atlantic that local fluctuations in physical and biological parameters (particularly in the plankton) are linked to large-scale phenoma like the North Atlantic Oscillation. It is essential for the future development of GLOBEC that a co-ordinated effort on basin-scale field sampling and basin-scale models be implemented. It is also essential that basin-scale forcing be integrated into regional models. The session has demonstrated that there is good linking between scientists and between disciplines across the North Atlantic with respect to development and exchange of the scientific ideas. Separate funding mechanisms makes it, however, difficult to develop joint projects. New opportunities in the funding system of Europe and North America might overcome this problem, and might contribute to synchronize the efforts.

The advection of zooplankton from deep ocean regions up on the shelves seems to be a generic process around the northern North Atlantic, which might be an important factor in generating interannual variability and in the life history of the fish stocks, such as cod. Exchange of the source codes of coupled and trophodynamic models might contribute to the establishment of generic GLOBEC models.

Award for Best Presentation at the Annual Science Conference: went to Charlie Miller et al. for an excellent paper and superb visualisation of "Coupling of individual-based population dynamical models for stocks of Calanus finmarchicus with numerical models of flow in the region of GeorgesBank" a

ICES 1997. Report of the Working Group on Cod and Climate Change (by correspondence) ICES CM 1997/A:9, 4pp

ICES 1997 Preliminary Report of the ICES/GLOBEC Workshop on Prediction and Decadal-Scale Ocean Climate Fluctuations of the North Atlantic. ICES CM 1997/A:13, 2pp

ICES 1998. Report of the ICES/GLOBEC North Atlantic Regional Co-ordination Group. Baltimore,USA 26 and 29 September 1997 ICES CM 1998/C:11, 10pp

In 1992 ICES established a Study Group on Zooplankton Production to (i) review existing methods for measuring biomass and production processes, (ii) set up laboratory and seagoing workshops to intercalibrate experimental methods and evaluate new technology, (iii) make proposals for improvement and standardisation of methods, and (iv) prepare a methodology manual.

A seagoing workshop to compare zooplankton sampling methods took place on board RV Johan Hjort and RV A. V. Humboldt in June 1993. Two laboratory workshops at the University of Bergen compared production methods using the copepods Acartia tonsa (October 1993) and Calanus finmarchicus (April 1994) and a further workshop was arranged by the US GLOBEC in Hawaii using marine copepods (April 1994). Results from these workshops and from other recent work are being used to compile a Zooplankton Methodology Manual.

The ICES Working Group on Zooplankton Ecology (WGZE), which was established in 1994, has taken over the task of completing the Manual.

The ZMM aims to review methodology used in studies of zooplankton and recommend standardisation and improvement.. Detailed descriptions of standard protocols will be included for some methods, but published sources, which include full descriptions of methods, will be referred to for others.

Where an agreed standard protocol is not possible, guidelines will be provided on how to reduce variability and move towards harmonisation and standardisation. Standard protocols and guidelines will refer to the particular investigative purpose and biological conditions under which they are appropriate. The ICES WGZE will take the main responsibility for the issue of standardisation, based on peer reviewed contributions from chapter authors and other experts.

The Manual is being edited by Hein Rune Skjoldal, Bergen, assisted by Jürgen Lenz, Kiel, Peter Wiebe, Woods Hole, Mark Huntley, Scripps and Roger Harris, Plymouth. It is being reviewed by the ICES WGZE and each chapter is also being independently peer reviewed. The Table shows the lead authors for each chapter and the current status of the manuscripts. The cut-off date for completing the chapters is May 1998 and discussions are underway on how the volume will be funded and produced.

Chapter l A short and general introduction to zooplankton and their production and ecology. Will highlight the role of zooplankton in marine ecosystems and their central position in relation to current research topics (aspects related to GLOBEC, JGOFS, LME, etc.). It will also highlight the need to put more emphasis on species and populations, and on the role of behaviour in relation to physical processes.

Chapter 2 Introduction to the strategy and design of studies of zooplankton. Will highlight the need for integration of various approaches, such as net sampling with acoustic and optical methods, field studies with experimental and modelling studies, and studies of zooplankton with studies of physics, phytoplankton and fish within a system ecological framework.

Chapter 3 Sampling zooplankton with nets and other means of physically retrieving the animals from the water. Will give an overview of sampling methods, improvements and standardisation. It will review major sources or error such as avoidance and clogging, and the issue of scale and representativeness. Sampling of live animals for experimental purposes will also be treated.

Chapter 4 Methods of determining biomass and abundance of zooplankton from samples taken with nets or pumps. Will deal with units of biomass, determination of biomass and bulk biochemical composition (C, N, P, protein, lipids, etc), species identification and enumeration, determination of size, and indirect determination of biomass from size frequency data.

Chapter 5 Methods for sampling, preservation and enumeration of nano- and microzooplankton.

Chapter 6 Determining distribution and abundance of zooplankton by use of acoustics. Will review the present state of plankton acoustics, the main avenues for further development, and the need to integrate plankton acoustics with other methods such as net sampling and optics, and with fishery acoustics.

Chapter 7 Optical methods for determination of zooplankton abundance, biomass and distribution patterns. Will deal with optical techniques for use both in the laboratory and in situ. This would include optical plankton counters, video-based systems and photography including silhouette photography. Optical methods for providing supporting information in zooplankton research (e.g. light conditions, phytoplankton pigments) will be treated in a brief and summarily manner.

Chapter 8 Approaches and methods for determining feeding and feeding rates of zooplankton. Will include a detailed review of ingestion, assimilation, food selection and predation. It will describe measurements based on incubations and/or gut analyses and indirect methods such as biochemical techniques. Methods for determination of in situ feeding rates could also be included.

Chapter 9 Growth and of production of zooplankton. Will review direct determination of growth in incubation experiments, egg production, moulting rates and stage duration, biochemical methods, methods based on size-frequency analysis of mixed plankton samples and general relationships between P/B ratio and size

Chapter 10 Methods for determination of metabolism and metabolic rates. Will review sources of error influencing metabolic rates and describe direct methods based on incubation and indirect methods such as biochemical techniques.

Chapter 11 Methods for describing population genetics and genetic variability of zooplankton. Will give a short general introduction to traditional and new approaches to studies of zooplankton genetics, and how genetics may be applied in studies of zooplankton population structure, dynamics and distribution patterns. It will review strengths and limitations of current and new methods and point the direction for future developments.

Chapter 12 Methods for studies of zooplankton population dynamics. Quantitative estimation of population dynamics based on results from analysis of zooplankton samples. Because of the time which has elapsed in preparing the mnual, the original text of this chapter has already appeared in Sarsia (82, 279-296).

Chapter 13 Use of numerical models in studies of zooplankton ecology. An overview of modelling approaches for zooplankton feeding, growth, population dynamics and production, zooplankton life history and distribution, including coupled physical-biological models and models of zooplankton-fish interactions. Use of data assimilation in numerical models. a

I recently accepted the Chairmanship of the Cod and Climate Change Working Group. With the changes in the ICES structure, 1998 looms as an important year for ICES committees and working groups as they have been requested to provide a five-year plan outlining their objectives and possible activities. At the next CCC meeting scheduled for Woods Hole on May 7-8, 1998, the working group will review where it has been, what accomplishments it has achieved and identify those areas where we think significant progress can be made linking climate variability to changes in cod stocks. Over the next few weeks I will be putting together a strawman of the objectives and potential activities of the CCC during the next 5 years as a focus for discussion during the meeting. If you have important issues that you would like to see included please contact me at drinkwaterk@mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca or Keith Brander at the ICES office (keith@ices.dk). I look forward to your input.

Although I know many CCC working group members, there are still many I do not know, so the following provides a bit of my background. While not always as active a member of the Working Group as I would like to have been, I have a long association with the CCC, from its early planning stages, to attendance at the first Backward Facing Workshop held in Canada at Dartmouth, and recently participated in the workshop on the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) in Copenhagen last September. I am a physical oceanographer by training and have worked for the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography since 1973. My principal research interests have been climate variability in the northwest Atlantic and their effects on fish and fisheries. This has included studies of the influence of physical environmental variables, such as temperature, freshwater runoff, and Gulf Stream rings, on the recruitment and distribution of species such as Atlantic cod, redfish, salmon, eels, American lobster, scallops, snow crab, and shrimp. Other studies investigated the role of the NAO on the climate of the Labrador Sea and the effects of the Labrador Current on the ocean climate variability on the Scotian Shelf and Gulf of Maine. I have a long association with the North Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) and the Standing Committee on Fisheries and the Environment (STACFEN) to which, with other colleagues I have been providing annual reviews of the environment since the early 1980s. I have also been active in providing environmental information to assessment biologists within Canada and for over three years have been chairman of the Fisheries Oceanography Committee, a DFO body whose mandate includes investigating linkages between the environment and fish.

I look forward to working with you during the coming year and hope to see you in Woods Hole.

"Headlines almost daily proclaim the demise of another of the world's fisheries or a crisis in the management of marine resources" Peter Wiebe wrote recently. Efforts to limit harvesting and to rebuild the commercial fish stocks, where they have been initiated cause economic and social hardship for communities dependent on fishing these stocks. Successful long term management requires an understanding of the role of climate variability and its impact on the structure of the food chain supporting the fish and other resource stocks, which is presently poorly understood. The GLOBEC program's goal is to understand how changes in the physical environment influences the growth and survival of young fish and other resource species and the rebuilding of harvestable adult populations.

The program involves development of better acoustical and optical automated sensing technology for microscopic fish larvae and their food in situ, utilization of state of the art biochemical and genetic techniques to monitor the nutritional status and population composition of the surviving animals, and integration of ship-borne data collection systems with new satellite sensors such as that for ocean color. This requires the development of new database management systems, data analysis and visualization structures that enable widely distributed, multidisciplinary investigators to rapidly share information and make decisions in near real-time to redirect data gathering efforts of ships at sea. Also necessary will be effective data assimilation techniques and coupled models, development of a predictive capability and design of a system of continuing ocean observations for effective fisheries management, as a legacy of the research program.

The history and roots of GLOBEC can probably be traced back further than anybody cares to remember. For me, at least, that means the early seventies and efforts on both sides of the Atlantic to embark on larger scale cooperative adventures to understand the population dynamics of zooplankton. Up until then, the science of understanding how and why populations of animals in the sea, including fish, fluctuated, was done by individuals who either collected samples using ships and nets, or who captured living animals and tried to do experiments on them in small containers in the laboratory.

In the 70’s we experimented with mesocosms - large, strong flexible plastic containers enclosing up to 2,000 cubic metres of captured sea water, floating at the surface of a protected natural body of water, was realized in Loch Ewe (Scotland) and Saanich Inlet (British Columbia). Over several years, groups of scientists converged on these sites from several countries, including U.K., Germany, Japan, Canada and U.S.A., and over weeks and months studied population changes of organisms ranging from bacteria to fish, naturally captured with the enclosed water (except perhaps the fish) and experimentally manipulated.

John Steele was central to the development of these experiments. When he moved from Scotland to become Director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, he continued to pursue the idea that understanding population dynamics of organisms important in the marine food chain would be essential to the successful management of fisheries. He stimulated a series of workshops in the U.S.A. a key criterion of which was to bring together fisheries managers and fisheries oceanographers (usually from government fisheries agencies) with academic researchers of the kind involved in the seventies experimental ecosystems. Important in the diverse mix, were two scientists whose background was firmly rooted in government fisheries laboratories (as was Steele's), and thus had credence in those communities, but who had also held strong convictions that attention to the physics and trophic dynamics of the oceans were vital, and so were respected by the academics. They were David Cushing and Brian Rothschild.

The series of "fish ecology" workshops, as they came to be known in retrospect, culminated in a very large gathering in Miami in 1982, which produced a remarkable collection of outstanding papers, and which called for a program dubbed REX - for Recruitment Experiment. Even a few Tee-shirts were made up with that logo. Unfortunately, people went their separate ways, became absorbed in their day-to-day interests, and the opportunity was lost. It was particularly unfortunate, because that was the very time when other major programs were in their embryonic stages, such as JGOFS, WOCE and TOGA.

About four years later, Brian Rothschild called me and suggested that we should revisit REX. About the only practical way to generate enthusiasm was to organize other workshops and regenerate a critical mass. John Steele, then Chair of what is known today as the Ocean Studies Board of the U.S. National Academy of sciences, organized a small workshop as a prelude, and subsequently Brian Rothschild assembled a large group at Wintergreen, Virginia, who again called for a major new program, this time with the broader mission to understand (in Brian's words) the biodynamics of the sea, which evolved to Global Ocean Ecosystems Dynamics (GLOBEC). The Wintergreen workshop had international participation and soon after that efforts were made to interest the ICES community at annual meetings, and other international oceanographic organizations such as SCOR and IOC.

The Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) is a long-standing component of the non-governmental International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). In 1991, SCOR convened the first international scientific workshop on GLOBEC at Solomons, Maryland, which Brian Rothschild chaired. GLOBEC was adopted by SCOR, as was JGOFS before it, and thus became an internationally recognized program. In several subsequent meetings at different international venues, the Steering Committee of International GLOBEC developed a science plan . In 1995, the international GLOBEC program was adopted as a core project of the International Geosphere/Biosphere program (IGBP), another major component of ICSU dedicated to coordinating the suite of international global change programs. GLOBEC thus became a stable mate of such IGBP programs as JGOFS, LOICZ and PAGES. Following its accession as an IGBP core program, a new steering committee was formed and a new Chair, Roger Harris, took over.

In the arena of international intergovernmental organizations, GLOBEC was brought to the attention of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) a sub-commission of UNESCO, headquartered in Paris. It was adopted by the General Assembly of member nations as a co-sponsored program with SCOR in the early 1990s, under the IOC program on Ocean Sciences/Living Resources (OSLR), and so it is, therefore, that the first GLOBEC Open Science Meeting takes place in March , 1998 in the UNESCO building, and across town from ICSU headquarters.

Efforts were also made, dating from the late 1980s, to involve regional groups of intergovernmental organizations. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) set up the Cod and Climate working group in the early 1990s, to explore a GLOBEC special case, the driving mechanisms for interannual to decadal fluctuation of North Atlantic cod stocks. This working group is still very active and has organized many important workshops. An ICES Cod and Climate Symposium was convened in Iceland in 1993. The ICES Biological Oceanography Committee was also very actively sponsoring GLOBEC-related interests. This included the establishment of a Zooplankton Ecology working group, which commissioned a zooplankton methodology manual, a Zooplankton Production Symposium in U.K. organized by Roger Harris and John Gamble, and the sponsorship of the first Transatlantic Studies of Calanus (TASC) workshop from which blossomed a major EU-supported research program.

This committee, along with other ICES standing committees, proposed to ICES that there be established an ICES/GLOBEC North Atlantic Regional Coordination Group, with an office and coordinator at the ICES Secretariat, to bring together these various activities within ICES and help coordinate all GLOBEC related regional activities ongoing in several of the ICES countries. The office represented a new venture for ICES in that it was to be funded by direct contributions from interested parties (the EU, U.K., Norway and U.S.A.). Keith Brander was appointed office coordinator in 1996, and has already shown the value of this approach to a core function of ICES, such that other ICES countries are contemplating making contributions.

This regional approach was also taken up by the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES), which has established the PICES-GLOBEC Climate Change and Carrying Capacity (sometimes called "the four Cs") program for the North Pacific. In 1995 representatives of SCOR, IOC, ICES and PICES met and agreed that this multi-tiered structure, where individual scientists combined to organize country programs, some of which might be part of larger regional (e.g. North Atlantic or Pacific or European Union) programs, would fit well as components of the overall international program. For regions of the ocean where there were no "local" countries, such as the Antarctic, and where there are a global distribution of ecosystems, such as the western boundary upwelling systems and their highly productive small pelagic fish, the international program would take the lead in its organization.

In the U.S. meanwhile, the first U.S. GLOBEC science steering committee was formed in 1989, with Brian Rothschild as the chair, and by the early 1990s a research plan had been implemented with the first funding from NSF and NOAA for the George's Bank program. Canada organized first its Open program followed by its national GLOBEC program. Other countries either developed a GLOBEC program (e.g. South Korea), or had a long-standing series of related programs (such as Norway's Mare Cognitum program).

Climatic events such as the current El Nino disturbance, are likely to foster even greater attention on the role of climate variability on ocean ecosystems around the globe. Currently, several tens of millions of dollars are being expended by governmental organisations in GLOBEC-related scientific activities. We must ensure that ICES is well-positioned at the start of its second century to advance our understanding of the causes of fish stock fluctuations, which was one of the fundamental objectives upon which ICES was established. a

The first round of funding for the ICES/GLOBEC project office, which was provided by the US, Norway, UK and EU (TASC programme), runs until July 1998. It pays, among other things for the Newsletter which you are now reading. At the ICES annual meeting last September it was agreed that it would be a good thing to continue with the committment to GLOBEC and to the project office, but it has taken some time to assemble the necessary funding. It seems likely that funding will continue for a further two years, with other countries joining the funding consortium.

The Cod and Climate Change programme is now under the wing of the new Oceanography committee of ICES and will be a part of the 5 year Science Plan which is being drafted. In the longer term this work will probably be absorbed into the general area of fisheries and environment interactions and it may eventually be part of the core funded ICES programme.

The meeting was held at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute für Polar- und Meeresforschung (AWI) in Bremerhaven 29-31 January this year. 40 scientist met to share their most recent findings, with around 30 presentations, spanning individual physiology, growth and behaviour of the targetted species, population interactions and modelling meso- and large scale phenomena. Three afternoons were set aside to enable the participants to discuss highlighted topics in small groups as well as in lively plenary sessions. Interesting data on long term trends of population abundance in relation to climatic variations were presented, but although the mechanisms are still obscure, evidence is emerging that divergent patterns of variation are found even within adjacent hydrographic regions in the NE Atlantic. The main objectives of the meeting were to enhance integration of specific parts of the program and to nurture a collective overview of the science within TASC. From this perspective the meeting was a great success and colleagues from the U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank Study and the EU funded VEINS program contributed greatly to this.

Co-Convenors:

Interactions between physical and biological processes occur in the ocean at a wide range of scales. Mesoscale physical phenomena (upwelling areas, coastal fronts, current jets and eddies), with dimensions of kilometres to tens of kilometres, have profound effects on biological variability. Understanding how these processes affect the structure and productivity of pelagic communities was the subject of an ICES/GLOBEC workshop in 1994 and continues to be the focus of much research, including direct applications to fisheries assessments. The purpose of this session is to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of studies on identification and understanding of the interactions between mesoscale physical phenomena and ecosystem processes, with emphasis on the following activities:

1. Identification of the significant mesoscale processes that characterize a given region, studies on their temporal variability and role of these mesoscale physics in modulating ecosystem processes.
2. Description and quantification of the dynamics of zooplankton populations, their trophic relationships with phytoplankton and with their major predators in areas governed by mesoscale physical forcing.
3. Influence of mesoscale physical forcing on the early life stages of fishes, on variability in recruitment and on the dynamics of pelagic fish (e.g. effects of mesoscale features on advection of fish larvae in coastal and shelf regions).
4. Predictive models of ecosystem fluxes and trophodynamics; models of coupled physical and biological processes at the mesoscale.

Contributions will be accepted for both oral and poster sessions.

For further information about dates, registration and the rest of the ASC consult the ICES Web Pages (http://www.ices.dk)

The Instituto Español de Oceanografía (IEO) is the major oceanographic agency in Spain, with 7 laboratories covering the Spanish coast (4 in the ICES area and 3 in the Mediterranean). Because the IEO is a public research organization and the results of its research provide science support to the Spanish government and international organizations, a significant proportion of the effort of the marine ecology and fisheries departments has been allocated to understanding the mechanisms influencing fish recruitment, and to factors which influence biological production and could alter ecosystems.

Thus, since the mid 80's the IEO has conducted research projects on the temporal variability of recruitment of small pelagic fishes (sardine and anchovy), and on the physical and biological properties and processes in the pelagic ecosystem. In all of these projects multidisciplinary approaches have been encouraged, and most of them have been carried out in collaboration with other Spanish and European agencies and laboratories.

The IEO has recently (January/98) developed a new set of research priorities, in which the GLOBEC approach to studying the above topics was considered as the most feasible and realistic option. Thus, the IEO have implemented the GLOBEC goal ("To advance in our quantitative understanding of the functioning and structure of marine pelagic ecosystems in relation to physical forcing to develop the capability of predicting the effects of climate change on such ecosystems") in two objectives.

1. Understand the underlying causes of the temporal variability, quantify trends in oceanographic properties and biological communities, and predict future scenarios and effects of global change in the marine resources.
2. Identification of significant mesoscale processes, and understanding the effects of physical forcing on pelagic marine ecosystems and marine resources.

On the basis of these objectives, the IEO will promote, among others, the following activities:

• Time series of oceanographic observations based on the systematic and continuous study of the ocean; Long-term trends
• Retrospective studies on oceanographic observations. Re-examination of historical data bases.
• Studies on common signals and patterns in climatological and oceanographic observations. Effects on marine resources at local and regional scale. Teleconnections.
• Identification of significant mesoscale processes in the Spanish coast, studies on their temporal variability and role of these mesoscale physics in modulating ecosystem processes.
• Studies on the description and quantification of the dynamics of planktonic populations, their trophic relationships and with their major predators in areas governed by mesoscale physical forcing.
• Studies on the influence of physical forcing on the early life stages of fishes, variability in recruitment and on the dynamics of pelagic fishes.
• Develop dynamic models of interactions in the biological communities from physical setting.

Many of these activities are already taking the form of specific projects, like the project RADIALES (which includes the systematic and continuous study of the ocean and the analysis of time series of oceanographic data), GIGOVI (study the fluxes in SWODDIES in the Bay of Biscay), and DYMMESI (studies on the dynamic and modelling of mesoscale events by satellite imagery), etc. Other projects related to advection, mortality, recruitment and trophodynamic of small pelagic fishes (in close connections with SPACC/GLOBEC) are being undertaken this year.

In summary, the GLOBEC approach to marine ecology topics fits entirely within the context of the IEO objectives and activities, and in fact, many of the above activities overlap the GLOBEC objectives and activities. They constitute the IEO contribution to GLOBEC programme.

The ICES WG on Zooplankton Ecology (ICES CM 1997/L:4) compiled a series of tables and maps to show the availability of routine plankton monitoring throughout the North Atlantic. These are intended to be updated regularly and to provide information relevant to fish stock assessment as well as for more general background on the state of the environment. The WG recommended that such information should be made more widely available, and as an example a table and map showing monitoring activity in Spain is included here

A workshop is being organised by the Icelandic Research Council in cooperation with the US NSF and DG XII of the EC to identify research tasks in the areas:

1. Physical and climatic variations in the North Atlantic on decadal to century scales
2. Dynamics of biological systems and possible links to physical and climatic forcing
3. Prediction and regional impact assessment

Attendance is by invitation only, but interested scientists may contact the Icelandic Research Council.

Further information will be made available on http://www.rannis.is/english/

If you are interested in contributing to or taking part in one or more of the above Working Groups and Workshops, please get in touch with the ICES/GLOBEC Co-ordinator, Dr K. Brander (keith@ices.dk) for further details. You should note that attendance is restricted and that participants pay their own expenses.

The best starting point to find information about international, regional and national GLOBEC programmes is the the International GLOBEC website http://www1.npm.ac.uk/globec/index.htm

It maintains links with all other sites as well as carrying a comprehensive calendar of forthcoming events, list of past reports, Newsletter etc. The address is:

We aim to print a new issue every 6 months or so and it will also be available from the ICES web site. Write if you would like to receive future issues. You are also very welcome to send news items, short articles etc.to: