Report on the ICON/CREWS Science Meeting
During the week of April 24 - 27, 2006, over twenty scientists, students and colleagues met in La Parguera, Puerto Rico for a Science Meeting (aka Think Tank #4) of Integrated Coral Observing Network (ICON) colleagues to help start a Climate Change/Ocean Acidification program at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), Department of Marine Science's Magueyes Island Marine Laboratory, site of the new NOAA/UPR collaborative Caribbean Coral Reef Institute (CCRI). Drs. Chris Langdon (RSMAS/UM), Joanie Kleypas (NCAR), Dwight Gledhill (NESDIS) and Matthew Huber (Purdue) gave presentations on climate change and explained how the ocean's carbonate chemistry has changed over the millenia, and how it will likely change in the future. New efforts and collaborations (Drs. Julio Morrell and Jorge Corredor--UPR) began with the Caribbean Regional Association of the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS), as well as a discussion of ongoing collaborative research efforts in oceanography (Dr. Francisco Pagan--UPR), ocean optics (Drs. Roy Armstrong and Yasmin Detres--UPR), coral bleaching and disease (Drs. Ernesto Weil [UPR], Alina Szmant [UNCW], and Ruben van Hooidonk [Purdue]), hydroacoustics (Drs. Rich Appeldoorn [UPR/CCRI], Jose Rivera [NMFS] and Doran Mason [OAR: AOML & GLERL]) and other projects.
Plans were instituted to utilize existing data from, and add new instrumentation to, the Coral Reef Early Warning System (CREWS) station at nearby Media Luna Reef. Data from the underwater ultraviolet light sensors, as well as other instruments at the Magueyes Island Laboratory, will be utilized to calculate a Saharan Dust Index in near real-time, beginning just ahead of the June influx of Saharan Dust at La Parguera. These data are expected to give new insight into the effects the dust has on coral and other marine diseases. A pCO2 sensor and water sampler will be installed during May and June to begin studies in ocean acidification; other proposals are in for purchasing another model of pCO2 sensor, and for total alkalinity and oxygen sensors. An anticipated new source of radar data from Purdue's Rosen Center for Advanced Computing will help provide new Level Two 3D representation of precipitation and wind vectors for the area, and will thus provide ICON and IOOS efforts a new data source for rain influence on runoff and bloom studies in the local embayment, as well as effects in local oceanographic processes. Plans have also been discussed for the implementation of a passive hydroacoustic sensor at the CREWS station for sensing local fish, marine mammal and diel plankton movements in the area; proposals are also in for the purchase of an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler and acoustic modems to provide circulation data for the La Parguera Marine Preserve.
Finally, award-winning book author Alanna Mitchell (Dancing at the Dead Sea: Tracking the World's Environmental Hotspots) attended the meeting and interviewed the scientists for her new book, The Deeps: The Secret Ecological Crisis of the Global Ocean.
Cheers,
Jim