The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES), in conjunction with NOAA, sponsored the Second ICES/PICES "Conference for Early Career Scientists" 24-27 April in Majorca, Spain. The objective of the meeting was to encourage greater involvement of young scientists in international scientific investigations and to foster their involvement in the management of marine ecosystems.
The meeting builds on the success of the ICES/PICES Early Career Scientists Meeting held in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2007 and the ICES Young Scientist Conference in Denmark in 1999. Interested early career marine scientists applied for an invitation from the Scientific Steering Committee. Applicants were required to be under 35 years in age or have completed a Ph.D. after 2007. Applicants were evaluated on their productivity, potential for novel science, and relevance of their research to the session themes.
Steven Barbeaux and Ingrid Spies of the Status of Stocks and Multispecies Assessment (SSMA) program and Matt Baker, a postdoctoral researcher with Anne Hollowed, were accepted to attend. Anne Hollowed, SSMA program manager, was an invited key note speaker for the Theme 2 Session: Human Interactions with the Marine Environment. Steve Barbeaux gave an oral presentation and Ingrid Spies presented a poster (.pdf, 1.38 MB) in the Theme 2 Session. Matt Baker's poster (.pdf, 10.2 MB) was presented in absentia by Anne Hollowed in the Theme 1 Session: Impact of Change on Marine Ecosystems. Their abstracts follow:
Climate change effects on fish and fisheries: Current outlooks and a roadmap for interdisciplinary research
(Anne B. Hollowed)
Recent global assessment reports provide compelling evidence that climate change is occurring. In response to these reports, the marine science community has endeavored to provide new science to improve our ability to understand and predict these impacts on fish and fisheries.
This presentation will examine the expected effects of climate change on ecosystem productivity, habitat quality and quantity, and how these changes will impact the spatial distribution, predator-prey interactions, and vital rates of marine biota. Case studies from around the world will be used to demonstrate how these expected changes will influence the quantity, quality, and availability of marine resources for human use. These case studies will demonstrate how members of the marine science community have united in an effort to develop mechanistic scenarios that are incorporated into stock projection models for use in evaluating the performance of management strategies under a changing climate. These examples fostered plans for new initiatives between ICES and PICES that are designed to provide credible, objective, and innovative scientific advice on the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems.
The success of these initiatives will challenge the next generation of young scientists to form global partnerships to communicate advancements in scientific understanding to improve our capability to more accurately project the implications of changing climate on marine systems.
