GLOBEC Activities in ICES

ICES has continued to develop a firm role in GLOBEC, and looks forward to a continued close collaboration with IOC, SCOR and PICES on GLOBEC issues. During 1995 it hosted a meeting in its Copenhagen Headquarters aimed at finalising the GLOBEC Science Plan for the approval of the IGBP. ICES has also now received funding from the USA and Norway to allow for the establishment of a North Atlantic Regional Office of GLOBEC and plans are currently underway to recruit a suitable marine scientist to man this Office. It is hoped that the Office will be opened in early 1996. Oversight and direction for this Office will be provided by a newly-established ICES/GLOBEC North Atlantic Regional Co-ordinaton Group. This Group will also seek to integrate national activities into a co-ordinated GLOBEC implementation plan, provide scientific direction for liaison with other regional bodies (e.g., PICES) and the relevant global organisations (IOC, SCOR, IGBP), develop plans for the design and implementation of an integrated data management system for the North Atlantic, and identify and direct the GLOBEC Office to implement appropriate ways to engage the widest possible involvement in scientific development and communication through workshops, the ICES Annual Science Conference, and special sessions at other scientific meetings.

In 1995 ICES/GLOBEC meeting activities have very much focused on Cod and Climate Issues which have been steered by the ICES Consultative Committee and the ICES/GLOBEC Working Group on Cod and Climate Change. Two substantive workshops assessing the state of knowledge of the interactions between the environment and various life stages of cod have so far been held. The first of these, the AGGREGATION Workshop was held in late 1994 and examined such issues as the statistical relationships between oceanographic models and cod growth and recruitment, mesoscale transport models, retentive circulation patterns, plankton production, and turbulence and feeding. Some of these issues were developed further at the Theme Session on the Influence of Intermediate-Scale Physical Processes on the Transport and Food Environment of Fish which was held at the 1995 ICES Annual Science Conference.

A second Workshop, the Backward Facing-Workshop, was held in early 1995 and examined past analogues for present and recent conditions of excessive cold from West Greenland to the Middle Atlantic Bight. This was undertaken using data from the early 1880s onwards in order to isolate the effects of fishing which dominate current data sets. A follow-up Workshop, focusing on the Barents Sea, is planned for early 1996.

Plans for a Workshop on Cod and Climate Database issues have been made for some time, but this workshop will not meet until November 1995. This Workshop will consider current and past analyses of the interrelationships between cod and the environment and will consider the data structures that are necessary to allow for a wide variety of analysis options. The Workshop will also consider a potential data management plan for GLOBEC, including investigating the pros and cons for distributed and centralised databases. (Harry Dooley of ICES provided this information, extracted from the 1995 ICES report to SCOR).