North Pacific Marine Science Organization

PICES Press Vol. 22, No. 2

2014 Inter-sessional Science Board Meeting:A note from the new Science Board Chairman

In recent years it has become a tradition to have the PICES
inter-sessional Science Board (ISB) meeting in conjunction
with another meeting or workshop. This year was no
exception as we met April 19–21 right on the heels of thePICES FUTURE Open Science Meeting (OSM) which washeld on the Kohala Coast on the Big Island of Hawaii.
FUTURE (Forecasting and Understanding Trends,
Uncertainty and Responses of North Pacific MarineEcosystems) is the second integrative science program ofPICES. Planning for the OSM had been in the works forabout 2 years, and the meeting was a tremendous successas you will see from the session and workshop summaries
in the following pages. In addition, since the OSM wasplanned around the mid-point of the FUTURE program,
Science Board decided it would be an opportune time toreview progress, identify gaps, and set the course for thelast half of this decade-long program. Science Board,which also functions as the Scientific Steering Committee(SSC) for FUTURE, established an Evaluation Team thatconsisted of some scientists involved in FUTURE andothers knowing little about the program, to conduct areview and provide an assessment and recommendations toPICES. The Evaluation Team report and comments fromthe PICES standing committees and FUTURE Advisory
Panels will soon be available on the PICES website. TheTeam did an exceptional job and although they foundprogress was great in many areas, there were other parts ofFUTURE where progress was lagging, and where extra
attention and refocusing is needed. Science Board will

discuss the report over the summer and will engage thebroader PICES community about possible changes inFUTURE during a day-long meeting on Sunday, October
19 at PICES-2014 in Yeosu, Korea. I encourage all PICES
attendees to participate in this meeting, since FUTURE is
identified as a high priority activity of the Organization.
Please plan to arrive in Yeosu in time to contribute to thisimportant discussion. ISB-2014 was my first official
meeting as Science Board Chairman after taking over from
Sinjae Yoo following PICES-2013 in Nanaimo, Canada.

FUTURE Evaluation Team members (from left): Jake Rice, Jackie King,Julie Hall, Manuel Barange, Bill Peterson, and Shin-ichi Ito.

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North Pacific Marine Science Organization

Participants of the ISB-2014 meeting (from left): Chuanlin Huo (MEQ), Phillip Mundy (AP-SOFE), Enrique Curchitser (Governing Council), Adi
Kellermann (ICES), Michael Foreman (POC), Tom Therriault (Science Board Chairman), Hal Batchelder (PICES Deputy Executive Secretary), JohnStein (Governing Council), Alex Bychkov, (PICES Executive Secretary), Hiroaki Saito (Science Board Vice-Chairman), Steven Bograd (MONITOR),Angelica Peña (BIO), Chul Park (PICES Vice-Chairman), Ken Mori (F&A), Libby Logerwell (FIS), Jennifer Boldt (MONITOR), Hideaki Maki (MOE,Japan), Igor Shevchenko (representing Russia), Toru Suzuki (TCODE), Karin Baba (Japan), Laura Richards (PICES Chairman), Robin Brown (GoverningCouncil), Guangshui Na (WG 31).

will be very busy with the 3rd Climate Change Symposium
next year in Santos, Brazil. PICES and ICES in the comingyear will review their framework for strategic cooperation
to ensure emerging research topics are included, somethingthat was intended in the original framework. As you may
recall from previous updates in PICES Press (see Vol. 20,No. 1, p. 13) these types of frameworks have been used toidentify other organizations/programs where increased
collaboration would be a mutual benefit. PICES Science
Board approved a similar framework for collaboration with
the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission (NPAFC)
following a recommendation from a Study Groupestablished to develop the framework. Another organization
with overlapping interests and geographical extent with
PICES is NOWPAP (Northwest Pacific Action Plan) which
is a Regional Seas Program of the United Nations
Environment Program (UNEP). China, Japan, Korea andRussia are members of both organizations. NOWPAP andPICES have a long history of cooperative efforts. A joint
Study Group was recommended by Science Board andapproved by Governing Council in early July to explore
strategic cooperation with NOWPAP. The Study Groupwill begin work this summer by correspondence and have aface-to-face meeting in Yeosu in October. These are but afew examples of PICES collaboration – as the depth andbreadth of PICES science continues to grow, so does ourneed (and desire) to work with others in the scientific community.

However, I was not the only one with a new leadership roleas this was also the first Science Board meeting for Jennifer
Boldt (Technical Committee on Monitoring), AngelicaPeña (Biological Oceanography Committee), and Steven
Bograd (FUTURE Advisory Panel on Anthropogenic
Influences on Coastal Ecosystems) who now has my oldjob. Also, Hiroaki Saito was unanimously approved asScience Board Vice-Chairman, and so I welcome Hiroakiin this new capacity.
As the science that PICES conducts and fosters enlarges inscope, so too does the need for strategic (and technical)
collaboration with other organizations. PICES and ICES
have a shared interest in Northern Hemisphere marine
science issues and established a framework for strategiccooperation (approved in 2011), joint working groups, andhave convened a number of jointly sponsored symposia,workshops, and topic/theme sessions. At ISB-2014 we
discussed two joint PICES/ICES symposia, the 6th
Zooplankton Production Symposium which continues anextremely productive series and a proposal for aSymposium on small pelagic fish tentatively entitled“Drivers of dynamics of small pelagic fish resources” thatwill revisit this very important topic that has once again
emerged at the global research level. Both will take placein 2016 and details on both of these events will be posted
online as they become available. Also, PICES and ICES
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PICES Press Vol. 22, No. 2
This will ensure a vibrant and responsive organization withexpertise in many areas of North Pacific marine science.
ISB-2014 provided an opportunity for Science Board todiscuss a new project recently funded by the Japanese
Ministry of the Environment (MOE) on the effects oftsunami debris, including invasive species, on the coasts ofNorth America and Hawaii. This new project will becentered on three themes: modeling debris transport;
surveillance and monitoring; and aquatic invasive species.
The project Co-Chairmen are Hideaki Maki (Japan), Nancy
Wallace (USA), and myself. These Co-Chairmen represent
different research areas and will be supported by a Project
Science Team comprised of Hiroshi Kawai and Atsuhiko
Isobae (Japan); Jim Carlton and Amy McFadden (USA);and Robin Brown (Canada). This group will have astrategic planning meeting this summer (bringing together
some colleagues from the Working Group on Nonindigenous Aquatic Species (WG 21). The project isalready underway so please watch for updates in futureissues of PICES Press.

Views from the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel where the FUTURE OpenScience Meeting and ISB-2014 were held.

Science Board also discussed the nominees for both theWooster and POMA awards but as you know, these will
not be announced until Yeosu. However, I would like totake this opportunity to remind the PICES community
about these annual awards; consider nominating yourcollaborators/colleagues in future iterations. There is atremendous amount of high-quality research andmonitoring being conducted within PICES and those who
stand out should be recognized.

Capacity attendance at the FUTURE OSM in April.

PICES-2015 will be hosted by China in Qingdao(previously held there in 1995 and 2002). The theme
description “Change and sustainability of the North Pacific”
was finalized shortly after ISB-2014. The PICES2015 website is open (http://pices.int/meetings/annual/PIC
ES-2015/2015-theme.aspx) for submission of topic
sessions and workshops. This new system which we haveused for the past few years has greatly improved theefficiency in evaluating and ranking submitted workshops
and topic sessions. Deadline for submissions is August 18.

Former Science Board Chairman, Dr. Sinjae Yoo, presenting an overview
of FUTURE.

We’ve been very busy as an organization and have anexcellent program developed for PICES-2014 in Yeosu. I
look forward to seeing you at the meeting where the theme
is “Toward a better understanding of the North Pacific:
Reflecting on the past and steering for the future”.

Thomas Therriault
Science Board Chairman

Conversations carried over from the OSM rooms to poolside.

5Summer 2014