A unanimity of opinion existed among participants in the Seattle meeting that an Alliance was deeply needed for monitoring the biology, physics, and ecosystem health of the entire California Current, from the northern tip of Vancouver Island British Columbia to Magdalena Bay, Baja California. The group strongly favored a continuation of the development of the Alliance and believed that a key initial step was broader recognition of the Alliance and its potential benefits. Four decisions were reached:
Participants voiced an interest in a broader vision of the Alliance than previously stated. The Alliance was conceived at the CalCOFI Conference of 2001 (link) as a California Current-wide expansion of plankton-oceanographic monitoring by vessels using a CalCOFI-similar protocol, supplemented by oceanographic information from remote and shoreside sensors, and instrument buoys. Participants suggested that the Alliance should also become an overarching trinational organization that would coordinate and facilitate most biological and physical monitoring taking place in the Current, particularly those related to natural resources and ecosystem health. This issue will be further discussed at the September meeting in Portland.
The relation of the Alliance to monitoring of bays and estuaries was clarified. The role of the Alliance would be to define the oceanic boundary conditions for coastal estuaries, bays and harbors. Such boundary conditions are needed for assessment and management of human impacts on estuarine water quality and natural resources. The mission statement (Appendix 3) was altered accordingly.
Seattle meeting participants again affirmed the importance of the NOAA Sanctuary program as a natural partner in the US monitoring scheme and encouraged developing stronger ties between the Alliance and west coast Sanctuary programs. PICES has a keen interest in seeing that something like the Alliance succeed. Of particular value to PICES would be the production by the Alliance of a an annual report on the status of the California Current. The role of the Alliance in relation to GOOS, NOPP, and FATE were also discussed.
Scientists from Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia met in person, by tele- and videoconference, (see Participant List, Appendix 1 ) to discuss the Alliance for California Current Ecosystem Observation (ACCEO), also referred to as the Alliance. Attendees included representatives from state, federal, and academic institutions. The meeting included an introductory presentation on the Alliance, general discussion of the concept, draft monitoring plan, future structure of the Alliance and other matters.
General discussion of ACCEO concept: The concept of an Alliance for California Current Ecosystem Observation was presented (link). Salient aspects are the need for ecosystem study on scales in time and space commensurate with the resources in question. For example, many pelagic and demersal fish migrate and are distributed beyond state and national boundaries. Consistent methods of observation and analysis are needed to characterize variability in time and space. Prediction, in addition to observation, was deemed important, involving both natural and anthropogenic phenomena. A change in emphasis in fisheries from pelagic to demersal, as well as in the oceanography, occurs as you go from south to north, thus the Alliance would not be restricted to either type of resource or region. It was recognized that plankton (e.g. fish eggs and larvae) are indicative of adults in a population and are used as both proxies of abundance (which requires complete coverage of spawning) and, with ancillary data, spawning habitat (which does not require complete coverage). Higher trophic levels, including fish, marine mammals, and birds, should be included. Dichotomies exist, e.g., plankton vs exploited species, nearshore, estuaries, and bays vs offshore, exploited waters vs marine protected areas. It was noted that it is beneficial to combine the results of monitoring programs with embedded process studies.
Discussion of the draft Planktonic-oceanographic survey (link): Participants discussed the strawperson sampling design for oceanographic and plankton monitoring. In essence, the design consists of quarterly cruises, including the IMECOCAL and CalCOFI grids and pairs of lines in regions to the north. Two lines per region, quarterly, were considered reasonable for acquiring statistics (e.g., mean, variance) to describe pattern and compute anomalies.
The NWFS proposed to conduct a pilot ACCEO survey project using Commercial fishers off Astoria in the near future. Use of the commercial fishing fleet to monitor the ocean using plankton-oceanographic methods, if successful would be a major advance for ACCEO as the cost and lack of availability of oceanographic vessels is a major barrier to implementing ACCEO in the Northwest US.
Various modifications of the monitoring plan were discussed. The group noted that logistics was a major factor in selecting the location of the lines and that science should be considered as well. The Canadian participants suggesting adding an additional line near the northern end of Vancouver Island. If such a line were added to the strawman plan (link) it would mark the northernmost extension of the California Current, therefore would be of considerable scientific value.
It was pointed out that sampling of the California Current requires lines of different offshore extent in different regions along the coast. In addition, participants pointed out that higher temporal sampling than quarterly is needed for the El Nino, and spatial resolution (more lines) in the winter or spring quarters would be needed to more precisely identify groundfish spawning. Others suggested focusing all effort on one sampling period rather than distributing it by quarters. All of these tradeoffs could be considered in a formal plan.
The important educational role that such regular surveys could play at host marine Universities was also discussed. Both the Humboldt State University, and Bodega Bay Laboratory (UC Davis) have expressed interest in occupying lines proposed on the map (link) located near their laboratories. They were not able to participate in the meeting but clearly the education role of ACCEO and the involvement of students from these and other Universities need to be explored in the September meeting. Another goal of the Alliance goal was considered to be fostering consistent methods of observation, sampling, and analysis, including integration among all groups studying the Current. Analysis of zooplankton samples, particularly for eggs and fish larvae, was difficult since regional laboratories lacked the expertise to do the work. This is an area in which CalCOFI could contribute importantly through training. The CalCOFI group of the SWFSC offered to train people in ichthyoplankton identification from any of the regional groups in the Alliance. Such training would take the form of a stint of 6-12 months working with the ichthyologists at the SWFSC then transferring back to their home laboratory depending on the experience of the applicant. Alternatively, an educational program could be developed at some of the laboratories or the samples also be shipped to the Polish Sorting Center for sorting and identification if no interests exists on educational aspects of this work. Standardization of analyses resulting from the surveys was also discussed. The concept of 'tool building' was identified as an area where the Alliance could contribute thereby allowing individual researchers to perform analyses with standardized tools, and ensuring comparability of results.
Coast-wide satellite oceanography and other remote methods were discussed as an important, but, so far, not an explicit part of the draft monitoring plan. Included in this discussion was SST, ocean color, winds, and altimetry, high-frequency (HF) radar (CODAR) mapping of surface currents, drifters, gliders, and buoys. Buoys, identified as useful for time series include moorings of NEP-GLOBEC, MBARI, and the southern California Bight. Meandering of the California Current may confound interpretation of mooring data, however; HF radar may help.
Structure and future of the Alliance: Three options were discussed regarding future action for the Alliance: 1) to end the process of organizing the Alliance; 2) continue organization, refine the mission, statement, carry out activities that generate broader recognition of the Alliance (a short proposal and a graphic presentation) and hold community meetings to discuss goals, responsibilities, and structure of the Alliance; and 3) begin to patch together a pilot monitoring program along the lines discussed in the white paper and draft plan.
Option 1, to discontinue because of lack of financial resources, was roundly rejected. A unanimity of opinion existed among participants in the Seattle meeting to continue the development of the Alliance (option 2). The group recommended holding another community meeting of ACCEO September 23-24 in Portland Oregon (prior to EPOC). The objectives of the Meeting were to inform others of the existence of the Alliance and its potential benefits and to gain a broader input on the possible organizational structure, responsibilities, and monitoring approaches. The meeting would include presentations on monitoring concepts, and workshops to define the goals, responsibilities, and structure of the Alliance. The proposal would better define the concept, identify stake holders and include sets of examples of beneficial products in pop-up windows within the text.
In a very positive step in support of option 3, the NWFS proposed to conduct a pilot ACCEO survey project using Commercial fishers to determine the practicality of using commercial fishing boasts to occupy the Astoria hydrographic line as proposed in the strawman monitoring scheme. CalCOFI volunteered to help initiate the project if needed.
In addition to discussion of options 2 and 3, a substantial number of those participating in the Seattle meeting expressed interest in an expanded view of the Alliance. This view holds that the Alliance should become an overarching organization that would coordinate and facilitate most of the biological and physical monitoring taking place in the California Current, particularly, that related to natural resources and ecosystem health. In this view the coordinating function becomes of equal importance to the Current-wide expansion of the CalCOFI pelagic ecosystem sampling protocol. Potential coordination roles would include management of a distributed data bases, data policy and standards, production of annual status reports on the status of the Current, annual conferences, data exchange, support and coordination of modeling, maintenance of an active and informative website and other coordinating functions. This coordinating role for the Alliance seemed to be of particular importance in linking together the Current monitoring activities of Canada, US and Mexico. No organization fulfills that international role today. PICES does not view coordination of a regional ecosystem monitoring program as falling under its authority, yet PICES is strongly supportive of the development of the Alliance to fill this role (see McKinnell comments, Appendix 4). The breadth of the responsibilities that the Alliance should undertake was not resolved in our Seattle discussions. This will be an agenda item for September 2002 meeting.
The group noted that the policy of the Alliance regarding monitoring and surveys in estuaries, bays and harbors was not indicated in any previous document. The group agreed that the key role of the Alliance was to define the oceanic boundary conditions for coastal estuaries, bays and harbors. Such boundary conditions are needed for assessment and management of human impacts on estuarine water quality and natural resources. The mission statement (Appendix 3) was altered accordingly.
Past plankton-oceanographic surveys: Important legacies exists in the data from past plankton surveys in the California Current from Baja California to British Columbia (Appendix 2). These data can be used to establish historic base lines for species abundance and ecosystem state which can be linked to a modern ACCEO time series. In this way Alliance scientists can assess how the system has changed. Past and on-going programs include CalCOFI; TINRO-AFSC, the Newport Line, Line P, La Perouse, (neuston collections for sable fish off Oregon), Puget Sound (?) Barkley Sound, and north of Vancouver Island. All of these have the potential of establishing baselines from an earlier time against which new measurements can be compared.
Relation to PICES, GLOBEC, AND FATE: PICES supports the Alliance. International collaboration, between Mexico, the US, and Canada to study the California Current is consistent with PICES goals. The results of a unified monitoring program are needed for the annual PICES State of the North Pacific report. This would be an important input to a basin-scale North Pacific Ecosystem Status Reports to be undertaken by PICES member nations in the future. The Alliance would benefit from a continuance of the monitoring program begun in the Northeast Pacific by GLOBEC. A new (FY 2002 ) NOAA program, FATE, would clearly benefit from the Alliance, and in particular to the increased pelagic monitoring in the Northeast Pacific proposed by the Alliance. FATE proposes to generate ecological indices of value for Pacific fishery stock assessments. Clearly, even the minimum survey design proposed could provide products that could be used immediately to evaluate the status of stocks and the environment.
Relation to US GOOS, NOPP and to Canadian Initiatives. A coastal GOOS (Global Ocean Observing System) has been mandated by the US Congress and a national plan is being developed. Thus far the planning appears to be focused on physical monitoring with relatively less attention devoted to monitoring biological species. Species monitoring is a key element of the Alliance because the Alliance is closely tied to natural resources and ecosystem health. No monitoring program can sustain itself for the long term without providing practical benefits to the community, such as those the Alliance could bring. Participants suggested that the Alliance might provide the coordination needed for a west coast GOOS. Another suggestion was that NOPP might announce an opportunity for funding pilot regional monitoring programs, and the Alliance should be prepared to respond to this research opportunity after the initial planning is completed. If the Alliance continues the process of designing a cooperative monitoring program for the California Current, it could be in a strong position to compete as a California Current-wide program should the opportunity arise. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is interested in the California Current and the future of the Alliance, and thus may be able to facilitate this process. In Canada, two recent initiatives seem germane to Alliance survey interests. There are oil and gas exploration with attendant environment studies, and environmental studies associated with the development of Marine Protected Areas. The information needs of such programs are quite similar to those that the Alliance might provide hence they may be possible to bring these interests into the Alliance.
