II. Major opportunities and challenges for the future (in no particular order)
One of the many important "modern" questions in plankton ecology (most of which were posed several decades ago) centers around population variability in time and space (patchiness). We are fortunate that our observing/sampling toolbox contains almost enough devices to completely define, with centimeter-scale resolution, the vertical physical structure of the planktonic habitat, as well as the vertical distribution of portions of the planktonic assemblage. How shall we progress in our understanding of the horizontal coherence of this vertical structure? To what extent are planktonic dynamics tied to the time scales of vertical and horizontal variability? To what extent is our understanding (or misunderstanding) of planktonic rate processes due to aliased observations obtained because of sampling limitations? As new instrumentation and techniques open new observational "windows" into the planktonic habitat, we should be prepared for new levels of complexity. Given the levels of detail and complexity in our observations, we should expend intellectual energy and commit financial resources to determine if our existing conceptual/theoretical framework for planktonic research will fit these more complete datasets.
We now are able to approach a more thorough quantification of the role of mesoscale variability in plankton production processes. Evidence suggests that eddies, fronts, and jets account for much of the regional variability in planktonic biomass and rates. Integration of remote sensing tools with rapid shipboard surveys using towed, instrumented systems (SeaSoar, Video Plankton Recorder, etc) will permit assessment of variability on kilometer horizontal scales with fine-scale vertical resolution. Instrumented systems must consist of physical, biological (including optical and acoustical), chemical sensors which obtain coincident data streams. The resulting in situ instrumentation, data output, and data integration requirements present numerous challenges over the next decade. We can expect that the present growth trend in data acquisition will continue (doubling of data rates every 2 years), resulting in ever- larger data sets after every cruise/deployment. The biological oceanographic community, in general, lacks the technical expertise and the personnel resources to cope with the analysis of these massive data sets. (More on this issue in the infrastructure section).
We have the opportunity to use recent advances in flow cytometry, video, optical sensing, holography, remote vehicles, clever in situ sampling, etc., to observe planktonic organisms in their habitat on the relevant time and space scales. Such observations can inform us about such things as cell physiology, mating behavior in zooplankton, life histories, predator-prey interactions, response to physical processes, sources of mortality. Constraints in instrument deployment pose one of the major challenges in obtaining these observations. We have learned from the physical oceanographic community that small-scale vertical observations require free-falling instrument packages or compensating winches to eliminate the smearing effects of ship motion. We need to explore new design approaches for instrument packages and explore new strategies for shipboard deployment under a wide range of working conditions.
We can anticipate that computing resources adequate for running complex, coupled physical/biological models will be available to large numbers of researchers. We have the opportunity to develop some predictive capability in these models if we focus on the quantification of the error terms in our parameterizations of planktonic rate processes. Cross-discipline collaborations with atmospheric and physical oceanographers need to continue.
Biological oceanographers can contribute to the identification, understanding, and management of coastal resources which will come under increasing stress in coming years due to climate change and increased human impact. Harmful algal blooms, decreases in biodiversity, coastal habitat degradation through pollution or erosion, are but a few of the topic areas in which our community is challenged to contribute.
III. Infrastructure Needs
There are several areas which will need further development during the next decade if we hope to move forward in our science. The most obvious ones to me are 1) data flow, 2) technical personnel and technical facilities, 3) student training, and 4) cross-discipline interactions.
Data Flow: We are collecting extremely large data sets. It is not unusual to complete a cruise with several gigabytes of raw data, particularly with the integration of physical, optical, acoustic data streams. We can expect that data acquistion rate to grow by at least a factor of two every couple of years. Data storage is no longer a problem, with 10s of gigabytes of disk available on inexpensive PCs in 1998 - by 2000 that will be 40-80 gigabytes per PC. The bottlenecks occur as we attempt to examine the data for errors, generate "corrected, calibrated" datasets, and extract meaningful information from those many gigabytes. "Data mining" tools are still in the early stages of development, and we will be severely handicapped without them as we move into the next decade of large datasets. Many of the issues raised in the recent NSF solicitation about Knowledge Networking and Distributed Intelligence are relevant in oceanography. It would be beneficial to define the data flow/analysis solutions rather than expect others to provide it for us..
Technical Personnel: Complex instrumentation and modern sampling techniques place a premium on having talented technical staff. There are several components to the situation. Skilled people are needed to work with and deploy complex instrumentation. Skilled people are needed for the manipulation, editing, extraction and display of very large, complex datasets. As electronic and computing skills have become more essential for technical staff in all aspects of oceanography, we have become competitors with high-tech industry for talented people. It becomes challenging to obtain support for technical staff who can work for high- tech companies at annual salaries of $60-80K, even if our academic institutions will except such salary ranges for technicians. So we are faced with a shrinking pool of experienced, talented technical staff (they move on to better paying positions), and a pool of less-talented recent grads from which to select potential employees (the most talented grads take the better paying positions in industry). The harsh reality is that we must find the financial resources for the talented technical people, or we must forego the pursuit of the scientific opportunities and challenges created by our progress over the past decades.
Technical Facilities: It has become more difficult to maintain technical facilities. Through the 1980's it was possible for specialized groups, such as mooring or buoy groups, or specialized machine shops, to obtain sufficient support for several technical staff. The oceanographic community now is facing the loss of these specialized groups. We will need to be creative in "outsourcing" some of scientific work.
Student Training: There are several areas of student training which need attention. We need to continue to train students in biological oceanography who possess strong quantitative skills and who can understand complex physical oceanographic processes. As laboratory and shipboard equipment has become more complex, it has become common for graduate students to complete a degree without thoroughly understanding the nuts and bolts of the hardware/procedures. We must assure that the next generation of biological oceanographers can recognize all the sources of "bad data", and our increasing use of high-tech tools means that the students need to know all the hardware/software/data processing glitches that may occur. This is not just a burden on students, but on us, as scientists and mentors, to understand, at the most fundamental level, the various ways we may be fooled by our instruments and methodologies. The effective transfer of skepticism and critical thinking, from mentor to student, becomes more time-consuming (read expensive), as the technical components of graduate work grow more complex. Another aspect of student training which needs attention could be called "practical oceanography." It is my impression that today's graduate students have fewer sea-going opportunities than graduate students during the 1960's and 1970's. One consequence of this lack of experience is an underappreciation of the practical logistics of shipboard science. The next generation of scientists will still need to understand slip rings, winches, electrical and mechanical terminations, power requirements, pressure cases and underwater connectors, etc. We could be using our marine technical staff within the UNOLS fleet to assist in this practical training, even if some of it has to be done in the classroom rather than aboard ship.
Cross-discipline Interactions: It is clear that biological oceanography has benefited enormously from interdisciplinary research, particularly with physical and chemical oceanographers. It is essential that this cross-discipline interaction continue to grow. We can foster this interaction through better understanding of the research questions which are compelling to our physical and chemical oceanography colleagues.
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