The goal of the sixth Ocean Best Practices System workshop (OBPS VI) was to guide the development of best practices and operating practices, to promote their documentation, and to share them widely using the OBPS. The workshop featured two plenaries held in two time zones each and 19 theme sessions held over two weeks. These theme sessions were planned and held by separate communities of practice in ocean science, engineering, and technology. The workshop attracted the attention of a total of 1152 registrants from around the world, with some 600 people attending across time zones in the theme sessions and the plenaries.
The workshop allowed the different communities of practice to focus on the creation, documentation and use of best practices working with members of the OBPS Steering Group. It drew on the experience of OBPS User Groups and stakeholders and provided an opportunity to gather feedback on how the system should evolve to better fulfil each community's vision, mission, and needs.
A common theme was that the broad ocean observing community appreciates the opportunities provided by the OBPS to focus on best practices. The community requested that this service be continued through additional workshops, opportunities to publish and share documents through the OBPS, and allow for cross-fertilization between different sectors of the community.
Workshop Recordings are available on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/yy84kdh2
The goal of the 6th Ocean Best Practices System workshop (OBPS-WS VI) was to guide the development of best practices and operating practices, to promote their documentation, and to share them widely using the OBPS. The workshop featured two plenaries held in two time zones each, and 19 theme sessions held over two weeks.
More than six "Cafe" sessions were scheduled throughout the workshop. These provided an opportunity to connect in an informal way outside the context of the Theme-specific sessions and Plenaries. They offered a space for cross-Theme conversations as well as for general networking and 'talking shop'. Members of the Workshop Organizing Committee hosted the sessions and were there to answer questions. Breakout rooms were also offered for participants to split into multiple small groups to have a variety of conversations in parallel.
The cafes attracted multi-language participants. A need for non-English cafes was identified and a language inclusion survey conducted. 51 responses identified clusters of Arabic, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese speakers with Greek, Malay, or Hindi also responding. The different language groups needed to organize their own "cafe" schedule to have their discussions, and our Technical Support (Ben Roberts) was available to assist. We recommend that a solution to facilitate inclusion of non-English cafes for future workshops be considered working with registered participants, possibly based on a pre-workshop survey.
research theme, capacity development including OBPS Training Courses via the Ocean Teacher Global Academy (OTGA) platform, and user support and communication through the bimonthly Newsflash and other communications. Some newer activities and capacities of the OBPS were described: Task Teams to complete discrete projects, an Ocean Decade Programme ('Ocean Practices for the Decade'), additional periodic workshops to discuss topical issues, an active Early Career Ocean Practitioner (ECOP) network, and collaborations with GOOS and other groups to support and advance international endorsement of best practices.
The OBPS is working to be a global, sustained and trusted hub of knowledge about ocean practices in the following ways:
• Expand work with developing nations, remote regions and Indigenous Peoples (e.g. in Africa, Arctic, South Pacific)
Paul van Ruth, Principal Scientist with Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), presented a case study on the creation and implementation of best practices in Australian marine systems and the positive impact they have had.
IMOS is a collaborative research infrastructure funded by the Australian Government to provide systematic, sustained, long-term observations of the marine environment. IMOS operations are underpinned by guiding principles that ensure that data collected through the programme contribute to community, management, legal and policy needs in Australia that support operational services, research, management and marine industries at regional, national, and global scales. A key component of these principles involves building trust through high standards and transparency. As a condition of funding through the IMOS programme, all procedures and protocols used for a given operation need to be standardised, endorsed by the IMOS community of experts, then registered with the Oceans Best Practices System. There are many benefits that flow from this approach. Operators unambiguously understand expectations. They have ready access to documented IMOS best practice protocols with regular, updated training. Users of IMOS data can be confident that it is of the highest possible quality and is readily accessible in standardised formats, which ensures the data will be used. Funders can be confident that investments made through the IMOS programme will generate outcomes that create impact in policy and management. Through this focus on building trust through transparent, best practice operations, IMOS has developed a reputation as a leader in marine science observations and data management.
To connect people with one another and to surface challenges and opportunities that might be addressed during the Workshop, Plenary 1, participants took part in a "mixer" consisting of three nine-minute breakouts. In each round, groups of 2-4 people considered these two questions:
• "What big challenge do you bring to this gathering?"
• "What do you hope to get from, and give to, this workshop?"
After the breakouts, participants were asked to share a challenge that stood out for them, via the Zoom chat. The output was uploaded to this Miro Board for further reflection. Here are some of the patterns that emerged from this harvest around these challenges:
• Working across multiple cultures and in multiple languages • Working across scales from local to global • Building capacity to implement and coordinate best practices • Establishing data standards across multiple platforms Language was a challenge in the dialogue. Many participants were not comfortable speaking in English and had signed up for the Workshop with the expectation that they would not need to participate. However, working on best practices led to discussions where these participants wanted to also provide their perspective. This also became apparent in the "Cafes". This led to the creation of a language inclusion survey that garnered 51 responses and identified clusters of Arabic, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, and other speakers.
e. Keynote 3: Plenary 1a : UN Decade of Ocean Science for the Sustainable Development and best practices .
Vladimir Ryabinin, Executive Secretary, (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission) highlighted best practices in the Ocean Decade and the key domains where best practices are part of the foundation for advancing the Ocean Decade objectives.
He acknowledged that there is still a lot more to do to develop best practices and to converge toward their adoption across the ocean observing community. He presented the Ocean Decade as an opportunity that maps to the best practices vision and mission. He compared Oceanography and Meteorological observations and said a dramatic increase was needed for oceanographic observations to reach the level of meteorological observations. He listed achievements up to the Calls for Actions for the Ocean Decade and highlighted the need for inclusion and partnerships of traditional natural science and social sciences. This includes designing mechanisms for codesign, adopting best practices, and addressing inclusion and equity issues across gender and early career professional communities. He noted new structures at the IOC and the Ocean Decade where data sharing and ocean observation officers are involved with the development of best practices. Dr Ryabinin applauded the growing success of promoting, creating and sharing best practices and finished with a supportive take-home message for all to maximise the potential of best practices to move forward the Ocean Decade itself.
Ashwini Sathnur of Scientific Marine Research, UNESCO, followed with a presentation which outlined the digital tools supporting the Ocean Decade and acknowledged that standardization was a primary goal. She concluded with stressing that the OBPS platform was an important source of historic, existing, and novel methods for ocean observation, applications and data management.
f. Keynote 3: Plenary 1b : BP in the Ocean Decade
Sara Venturini spoke on behalf of Group on Earth Observations/GEO. She reminded participants how GEO and particularly GEOBlue Planet (the ocean 'arm' of GEO) was supporting the Ocean Decade Actions by working to monitor and share earth observation data alongside such organisations as GOOS. GEOBlue Planet focuses on the knowledge gap in scientific questions and priorities and has produced a set of inputs around the need for a clean ocean; a predicted ocean where society has capacity to understand the ocean; a safe ocean to protect from hazards and for coastal zone management; and a sustainable, harvested and productive ocean. The policy of GEO leveraging its convening power across stakeholders was developed in 2019 in Canberra, where panellists discussed how GEO could contribute to the UN Ocean Decade. More recently in July 2022 there was a dedicated session on developing policies on how earth observations can enable integrated coastal zone management and support activities, such as marine spatial planning in which the use of best practices particularly in less developed regions was considered. COP26 in Bonn, first mandated to anchor the Ocean Decade under IOC, and in July 2022, the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon recognized the importance of ocean observations deploying new technology and using earth observation data to tackle existing and emerging environmental challenges. There is a push to frame the discussion through a lens of ocean climate/biodiversity nexus and integrate big earth data for coastal zone management and ocean actions in general. The Geo community consists of member countries and agencies and networks (MBON etc) and it aims to take on the role of implementing work to fill the data gap. She welcomed discussion on best practices and sharing knowledge. She reflected that diversity and inclusion were elements planned into the Ocean Decade Programme even as early as the first meetings. She highlighted that diversity is a lot more than gender, and quoted that "dimensions of diversity include the visible and invisible differences that exist between people" (Tulloch 2020). Inclusion is an action which should be tackled at institution and personal levels. She highlighted the global work in many projects; and the work in underrepresentation for example in the Women in Marine Science initiative, and explained the launch of the Stakeholder Consultative Forum for Empowering Women and invited the community to engage. She continued with an outline of the ICES DEI activity where the need for change and working toward a more balanced inclusive organisation has been recognized. She showed the importance of collecting gender data not just quantitatively but qualitatively, to reflect particular career levels, and collecting experiences of female workers. Finally, she emphasised the need for executive level commitment and resources to carry out DEI work and make it happen rather than "tokenistic" application. The inclusion of the DEI programme will be an important outcome of the
Workshop expert technical support for participants was available via live expert support and via email. Support was provided for the QiqoChat Platform that provided the interface to the meeting calendar and different sessions. This included the TeamUp Calendar, Plenaries, Workshop Cafes, and Theme Sessions.
The OBPS Workshop VI technology configuration is summarised in Figure 2.
The main platform was QiqoChat which complements the virtual meeting platform (Zoom), allowing participants to move in and out of different virtual spaces, and to use chat within each space. QiqoChat also served as a firewall for net security. In addition, we used Eventbrite for registration and used a Google Teamup calendar to provide an overview of all meetings, and how to access them. QiqoChat provides a social wrapper around Zoom meetings so that participants can move themselves in and out of different sessions (each with their own zoom access). This creates a vibrant and empowering online event/conference experience that replicates the freedom of movement to enter and leave a session available at inperson events. Participants made choices in real time about which breakout, panel, or workshop they wished to attend. QiqoChat also integrated Google Documents, background descriptions of the working groups and other tools. For some, the use of computer video enhanced the interactions. Several orientation/onboarding sessions were offered to workshop attendees prior to the start of the workshop. While most participants would be familiar with Zoom, they may not have experienced QiqoChat before.
This short session provided guidance on the logistics of the workshop sessions and then reinforced the workshop goals: to encourage the development of best practices (BP), to promote their documentation, and to share them widely using the Ocean Best Practices System. This includes developing a framework/method for establishing best practices in ocean observing, and for gaining endorsement for these practices from the community.
The goals of each of the sessions/themes was to address the following questions:
• Recommendations from your Theme Session on needs for development of methods and best practices This includes:
• Recommendations for the community The requested output of each theme session, to be delivered to the workshop organizers, was a report (template provided) summarising the theme's requirements and recommendations for best practices, and recommendations to the OBPS Steering Group for future planning. These materials are reproduced below. They form the basis for the workshop recommendations outlined during Plenary 2.
The objective of this session was to learn about recent successful efforts to create best practices for surface radiation and ocean colour, and apply lessons to other air-sea interaction observations. Talks covered steps to endorsement, scientific and organisational aspects of mature best practices, and paths forward for fields developing new best practices. Group discussions after the talks surfaced themes such as the need to have organisations that can take over long term stewardship of best practices after fixed-term programmes (like OASIS) come to an end. We also had lively scientific discussions about, for example, the challenges of flow distortion around ships and buoys. We hope that the sessions will help new best practice efforts gather momentum, and will also propel developed best practices towards endorsement and adoption.
Multiple meetings, workshops and collaborative writing projects, with broad community input. A small number (1-3) of leaders with time, energy and connections to organize the effort.
Time and energy demands on the leaders. Finding independent reviewers, especially for the peer-review process. Most people with knowledge to provide a thorough review will be involved or have associations with authors. Where are there gaps?
In general: autonomous vehicles. Hari shared some good practices from PEMSEA's capacity development programme that led to better coordination mechanisms in implementing ICM programmes in Tangerang. One example is the co-design process in the whole cycle of the programme, which was designed based on the the specific needs in his organization and its focus area on habitat conservation, which resulted from needs assessment and consultation between PEMSEA and Tangerang Regency. The institutional arrangements following the completion of the programme also enabled the retention of capacity built in their organization, and largely in Tangerang, Indonesia. The programme has the vision of building a global ocean science enterprise with networks of summer schools and other exchange modalities such as longer visits and online sessions. The presentation also highlighted some of the challenges faced including inadequate funding despite requests to expand the training to other regions such as Port Harcourt.
Panel Discussion (Panelists: Evgenia Kostianaia; Maila Guilhon; Harriet Harden-Davies)
Johanna Diwa opened the panel discussion with a short introduction of an online tool that UNESCO-IOC is currently developing which addresses one of the most common challenges in looking for one place for capacity development opportunities. In response to Capacity Development (CD) needs identified by the Member States, UNESCO-IOC has developed a prototype of an online tool (a catalogue of sources) which allows users (e.g., early career professionals, managers, technicians, government officials, etc.) to easily search for on-line sources of information on capacity development opportunities (e.g., trainings, fellowships, internships, grants, etc.) at global, regional, and national levels. The tool is called "The Ocean CD-Hub: Gateway to Ocean related Capacity Development opportunities around the world". Ocean CD-Hub
The overall aim of the Ocean CD-Hub is to:
• Serve as a one stop to easily search for available CD opportunities (for CD beneficiaries) • Identify synergies and potential partnerships with other organizations (for CD providers) • Help avoid duplication of effort and save resources (for CD providers)
• Help Member States report on progress and achievements towards:
SDGs, UN Ocean Decade, etc.
The current prototype is limited to CD activities and opportunities that are:
• Open to developing country nationals • Ongoing programmes rather than ad hoc one-time activities like workshops or one-time courses • Currently active or planned future activities, i.e., completed activities were not included At the panel discussion, the panelists gave their views on the best approaches to implement capacity development and mechanisms to engage in creation and adoption of best practices in capacity development. The discussion was guided by the following questions:
1. Are there success stories in your community that were established as best practices on capacity development?
2. What steps are needed to encourage wide use of BPs and its adoption, creation, promotion and replication in your community? 3. How to leverage BP and its recognition as a huge potential to 'incentivize' career/academic promotion? 4. Is a generic BP template on capacity development enough to cover all use cases, or are there specific CD use case which will be more useful as a guide in your community?
They highlighted:
• The need to build connection between academia and the industry. These connections strengthen career growth and enhance job creation among early career ocean professionals. There is also the need to strengthen connections between different CD programmes with government to ensure maximum benefits. • Need to strengthen ocean observation through cruise trainings. After the training, the participants should communicate their findings by presenting in conferences or publishing the scientific findings. • The government agencies should be aware of the existence of the various CD projects and programmes. This makes it easy for citizens of different countries (e.g developing) to move to other countries and participate in the CD activities. • We need to determine how to measure the success of the various capacity development activities • It is important to understand intentions of CD promoters and the potentials of the programmes to make a difference. • The programme activities and objectives should also be aligned with sustainable development goals as well as the long-term goals of the funding agencies. • The success of various CD projects depend on what is given and received, the motivation and how the giver-receiver partnership is contextualized.
There is therefore need to evaluate the process and outcome. • Relevant policies should define partnerships in order to support sustainable and long-term CD initiatives for lasting connection, that help institutionalizing CD activities with programmatic approach. • To leverage the best practices, principles should be set to guide establishment of partnerships as seen in the important role of best practices from declaration for small island developing states CD.
• There is also need to develop templates for staggering different elements of a CD activity, e.g. different concepts, varying levels (institutional, organizational, systemic), contexts, etc.
In conclusion, the workshop presented examples of CD programmes from which the public can draw methodologies and principles for further discussion into developing ocean best practices and efficient capacity development programmes. The panel session also gave recommendations towards identifying and promoting best practices in capacity development for sustainable ocean science. Different approaches such as stakeholder engagement, setting guiding principles for capacity development and publishing reports on success and failures of CD programmes were highlighted as priority factors in realizing sustainable ocean best practices and capacity development during this decade of ocean science and
Access to the resources needed to properly observe and monitor the coastal ocean is a major challenge faced by many countries and institutes around the world particularly in the context of pressures on energy resources and raw materials.
A wealth of valuable information can be gained from many regions through basic/ traditional coastal oceanographic studies when conducted in conjunction with fixedpoint coastal observing systems that are a component of existing and/or planned international programs. However, identical equipment and methods are also of great value in their own right, with applicability to diverse scientific and applied research questions and to coastal environments ranging from wetlands to estuaries to nearshore and open shelf settings.
A working group has been established under the IODE/IOC/GOOS Ocean Best Practices framework with the goal of identifying common and accepted best practices already in use within the community for observations of physical, chemical and biological parameters of the coastal ocean.
Coastal Observation for all 1 12-10-2022 4:00 PM UTC 6:00 PM UTC 2 13-10-2022 6:00 AM UTC 8:00 AM UTC 3 13-10-2022 11:00 AM UTC 13:00 AM UTC
Lucie Cocquempot: lucie.cocquempot@ifremer.fr Tommy Bornman: tg.bornman@saeon.nrf.ac.za Jethan d'Hotman: js.dhotman@saeon.nrf.ac.za Samuel Obeng (ECOPs)
Theme Session Meeting recording(s) available at: https://youtu.be/BiUhyR65sxQ
Digital twins build on an observing system and predictive processes or data-driven models that users can interact with to support their needs.
The connection between the digital twin and the real one requires a well-formulated interface between the digital twin, environmental data, and the user. User interaction is therefore an essential function that is embedded in the design of digital twins, including visualisation, user-driven data transformation and data-science tools. Thus, Digital Twins of the Ocean (DTO) will enable users to address 'What if' questions based on shared data and models. They empower a number of stakeholders to visualise and explore ocean knowledge and forecasts, and provide decision support for ocean sustainable development. The use of Digital Twins is wide and rapidly developing spanning a wide range of use cases from engineering to policy to science to operational services.
In this session we will discuss recent advancements from ongoing Digital Twin of the Ocean initiatives and their approach to data interoperability.
Session
The overarching goal of OBPS Workshop VI was "How can we develop a framework /method for establishing best practices in ocean observing, and for gaining endorsement of these practices from the community?" One way to approach this is through the creation of templates for various tools, such as decision trees, that can be easily integrated during the initial development of best practices. This working session introduced the community to the newly established Decision Tree Task team and engaged with the community in the use of decision trees as tools to accompany or coincide with best practices. The first hour of the session included a presentation introducing the tree task team and the review of example decision trees being actively developed by the OASIS, RVTEC, and IMOS best practices working groups. The second hour of the session included discussion on the use of decision trees as tools in best practice development.
Decision While our session was mentioned during other sessions, no formal collaborations were established.
Overall, the consensus was that there is a desire for and overwhelming support for the Decision Tree Task Teams plan for the development of a best practice for decision trees and templates based on purpose or application. The Decision Trees for Best Practices session concluded with an open discussion on decision trees with highlights that included how to accurately tag, filter, and layer metadata information to easily guide the user to decision trees and subsequent best practices, establishment of a controlled vocabulary for decision trees and review of current terminology associated with decision trees, and using decision trees as a mechanism for convergence by bringing in representatives from other OBPS working groups actively developing best practices into the Task Team to develop decision trees in parallel. Again, the consensus was that decision trees in conjunction with or in parallel to best practice documents are useful and transparent tools to visualize complex processes to users who may not be experts in the topic and as useful tools that promote standardization and community adoption. The biggest challenge for the Task Team will be membership, as participants emphasized the importance of the Task Team, several made it clear that their ability to commit was hindered by other engagements.
• Recommendations for the community ○ What steps have been defined for adapting, creating, evolving and maturing best practices for your focus area(s)? Decision trees in conjunction with or in parallel to best practice documents would be useful and transparent tools to visualize complex processes to users who may not be experts in the topic and as useful tools that promote standardization and community adoption. ○ What are the challenges?
First and foremost, the current challenge is finding members to join the Decision Tree task team, many in the community alluded to overcommitment and the inability to join at this time. ○ Where are there gaps? NA • What are the success stories?
IMOS presented the most mature decision trees developed for their application and detailed their endorsement process. This use case demonstrated not only community consensus on the importance of decision trees but also on the desire and need to implement trees to distill complex processes to the community.
N/A ○ What are the recommended steps to move forward?
The first step will be to establish the remaining task team members, reaching out to some of the other best practices working groups to solicit members (e-DNA, Marine Biodiversity, Seagrass, Ocean Decade, etc.). Additionally, following the review of current decision tree terminology, we will reach out to NERC to work toward establishing a controlled vocabulary for decision trees.
• Recommendations for the IOC's Ocean Best Practice System (OBPS)
• How can OBPS help your community discover existing methodological documentation? One of the main discussion points from our session was how to accurately tag, filter, and layer metadata information to easily guide the user to decision trees and subsequent best practices. 8. Future Collaborations OBPS connected the Task Team with Virginie van Dongen-Vogels during the workshop session planning process and helped to establish collaboration and further, global representation with our group. Our hope is that OBPS may offer additional recommendations for members to join the Task Team.
The session focussed on the development and implementation of low-cost ocean technology and addressed the themes of improving its accessibility and global dissemination. Our speakers encompassed representatives from academia, industry and nonprofit communities, each to provide a lens through which low-cost deep-diving ocean sensors have been successfully developed. We focussed on the obstacles facing the adaptation of ocean technology and formed a discussion facing on how to enable use across a broader community of stakeholders.
Technology The predominant gap that exists for deep-ocean observations is the large lack of access to and thus knowledge regarding the deep-ocean. This gap centers on a need for increased accessibility, equity, and inclusivity towards the stakeholder communities. ○ What are the success stories?
The speakers presented success stories for both the development of innovative low-cost technology and for its implementation and use by the community. Speaker Dr. Dominguez-Carrió presented a lowcost drift camera system that has produced a far more comprehensive understanding of deep-sea habitats off of the coast of the Azores, in comparison with previous ROV and AUV trials. This was an example of a low-cost alternative to the current exploration technologies available, which was also published online with blueprints, to open innovation to the global community. Speaker Dr. Phillips presented a slew of low-cost sensors developed in academia to achieve deep depths. Phillips work included the use of material alternative to high-cost materials, such as titanium housings, by leveraging advances in 3D printing and resin casting to significantly reduce the cost to the fabrication of instrumentation.
____________________________________________ eDNA 1.
The UN Ocean Decade Project, Better Biomolecular Ocean Practices (BeBOP), is building a foundation towards better recording, transparency and findability of omics/eDNA practices which will eventually lead users to being able to make better decisions on what is best practice. The work started in an earlier Ocean Best Practices System workshop and has been included in an OBPS Task team. During sessions this week, we evaluated our framework in the context of other efforts towards protocol harmonization and machine readability, discussed minimum necessary metadata to describe protocols, and how we might better share and evaluate eDNA field sampling programs moving forward.
Harmonizing
During the first eDNA session we presented the work completed since 2020 by the Omics/eDNA OBPS Task Team and the Better Biomolecular Ocean Practices (BeBOP) Project under the UN Ocean Decade. We discussed other initiatives working towards similar goals of omic methods and and protocol sharing as well as the main challenge across these efforts. Participants also identified which portions of the omic workflow they are currently most concerned with as well as gave feedback on areas of improvement for BeBOP
In our second session we presented the draft version of MIOP, a checklist of Minimum Information about an Omic Protocol to support the findability and comparability of protocols. We had a fruitful discussion in which we reviewed the current list of terms. Further, we discussed where additional terms may be necessary as a supplement to MIOP for different use cases or types of protocols. These additional 'packages' may be developed for each methodological category of protocols. Also, the formatting of the protocol markdown templates could be designed so that certain metadata fields can be automatically populated.
During our third eDNA session we focused on eDNA experimental design. Many eDNA/omic studies take advantage of ongoing traditional specimen sampling/survey efforts and are constrained in temporal and spatial sampling by logistical limits. When considering starting a new eDNA study, we still lack the historical data necessary to best determine optimal sampling frequency or spatial coverage needed. In practice participants often consider the ecology of the organisms they wish to detect (e.g. seasonality of presence in system) and secondarily then consider the practicality of sampling the environment (e.g. cost, logistical challenges, effort). Overall, we discussed how eDNA reflects the presence of organisms in the environment but can be influenced by physical movement of eDNA. In the future we must consider how to adjust ecosystem surveys in order to maximize detection of organisms through eDNA molecules.
•
During the workshop we connected with several other ongoing or spinning-up eDNA/omics groups which would like to use our infrastructure to share their protocols (e.g. Southern eDNA Society, EMBRC's EMO BON network).
Our MIOP terms are being defined using a language compatible with the GSC infrastructure (MixS standard) so can be adopted in the future as a new standard check list. ODIS/OIH will also work with BeBOP to connect its protocol metadata to that of partners federated through ODIS (including the OBPS).
In this session we aimed to discuss how to pave the way for best practices implementation in citizen science observations of environmental plastic litter in coastal and marine ecosystems, while promoting equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) for a wider meaningful impact. We have focused particularly on the following topics:
• Best practices for data acquisition and standardisation
Citizen science has the potential to address data gap issues in assessing and quantifying plastic litter data in the environment, by using participants as "sensors", and simultaneously increasing the public awareness towards plastic pollution. In citizen science projects, participants are included in one or more stages of the research process, and projects often lead to scientific outcomes. In this session we aimed to discuss how to pave the way for best practices implementation in citizen science observations of environmental plastic litter in coastal and marine ecosystems. Together with a group of experts from around the world, we discussed why is it a good idea to involve citizens in environmental/marine litter observations/monitoring, and how can citizens contribute to producing high quality data. We mentioned what citizen science is not about, how it is not a clean-up activity, but rather a scientific activity aimed at data acquisition and at contributing to ocean literacy of the participants. We mentioned the benefits, e.g. access to data from a broader geographical area, contribution to education and ocean literacy, and challenges, e.g. funds, overcoming stereotypes from scientific peers, time required for communicating and adjusting procedures to the target groups, of citizen science for litter observations. The general opinion from all the experts is that citizens produce good quality data when surveying macroplastics, and meso/microplastics (larger, > 1 mm), that data is often FAIR and open access. The efforts of citizen scientists should be recognised and "honoured", and their contribution in time and kind valorised. This effort should however always be complemented with the contribution of scientists, who can for instance do quality checks of the data, but also analyse it and promote it to the adequate stakeholders (policymakers, industries, etc). We all conclude that citizen science should be collaborative, that can be citizen driven and can welcome the public contribution at various levels, and that it can assist in improving the knowledge on plastic litter in the environment.
• Recommendations for the community ○ What steps have been defined for adapting, creating, evolving, and maturing best practices for your focus area(s)? Citizen science should be collaborative, that can be citizen driven and can welcome the public contribution at various levels, and that it can assist in improving the knowledge on plastic litter in the environment. Protocols should be accessible, provided in plain language to guarantee good quality data, which should be FAIR.
○ What are the challenges? Comparing sampling efficiency between citizens and technically trained experts.
○ Where are there gaps? Some activities do not have the deserved visibility, and perhaps the data is then not accessible for the right stakeholders (e.g. some geographical areas).
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The sessions will highlight existing best practices in Aquaculture production and Fisheries being implemented in different regions of the globe. The development of best practices in Aquaculture and Fisheries is of the uttermost importance to promote the sustainability and competitiveness of the sectors while ensuring reliable food production in the long term. The session will stimulate sharing of knowledge between participants to exchange on existing best practices being implemented across systems and regions, contributing to develop and apply best practices that can be executed by researchers, producers and policy makers.
The session will outline examples of actions being developed and case studies that could provide opportunities for guidance and collaborative development and will conclude through an open discussion providing advice or guidelines to identify data and methodologies of interest and how these can sustained and propagated.
has contributed to increase production while fostering its sustainability. § Identify the challenges that have been encountered while developing these best practices § Identify key data and methodologies for data collection and management in order to develop best practices ■ Need to implement ways to allow the exchange and integration of information between the existing repositories
• Recommendations for the IOC's Ocean Best Practice System (OBPS) ▪ Identifying priority areas for aquaculture practices exchange is suggested to be a good starting point as well as overviewing the needs for best practices and standards to be developed.
Harmonization of the type of data to be collected as well as methodologies or protocols as also been suggested as key for the establishment of aquaculture best practices. Considering that various institutions, initiatives or projects have developed initiatives to provide access to aquaculture best practices or standards it has been mentioned that there is a need to implement ways allowing the exchange and integration of information between the existing repositories. Consequently, OBPS could act as a nexus to generate an overview of the existing information and bring together the existing standards and best practices repositories.
The workshop sessions on aquaculture allowed the sharing of experiences and practices highlighting a need for further exchange to determine the possible contribution OBPS to foster aquaculture best practices exchange. Consequently, an informal café discussion was scheduled to discuss the possible creation of a working group to establish possible strategies to facilitate the integration of information between existing repositories. This will be further discussed in a meeting scheduled to take place in November 2022.
This session aims to showcase and discuss best practices to sustain marine life observations in under-resourced regions of the world. Our main goal is to foster an open and diverse collaborative environment for sharing experiences and creating low-cost long-term coordinated efforts to monitor marine ecosystems. Each meeting day covered a different theme: 1) Field protocols; 2) Operational infrastructure; 3) Data management; 4) Capacity building and outreach; 5) Networking and collaboration). Participants gathered information about best practices that helps them sustain long-term monitoring of marine biodiversity and ecosystems in their region, challenges faced when implementing and hosting these marine life observatories, and up-to-date strategies and tools that support the continuity of observations.
Day 1 Field protocols October, 12 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. No
• Recommendations for the community ○ What steps have been defined for adapting, creating, evolving and maturing best practices for your focus area(s)? Overall, the participants identified that there is no specific documentation or collection of best practices applied to sustain longterm marine life observations in under-resourced conditions. Most knowledge relies on the experience of long-term ecological sites and monitoring programs and networks, and information is mainly shared among peers. The team highlighted the importance of raising this discussion and gathering materials in order to assist the implementation of novel observatories in the least developed areas of the world and improve the capacity of the existing ones. ○ What are the challenges? (per subject/theme) 1) Field protocols:
• It may be difficult to introduce a new (maybe more efficient) method in a long-time observing site without breaking the time series, and the local staff may not agree on standards and practices.
• Protocols are not easily accessible.
• Standardization of data acquisition requires a lot of capacity building, especially for observatories that rely on citizen science. • Some areas are remote and require to develop of new and specific sampling practices. • Many countries lack regulations to manage marine biodiversity observations. • Oceanographic campaigns and the best practices associated are becoming an expensive investment.
2) Operational Infrastructure:
• It is difficult to access habitats beyond coastal areas.
• Continuous and steady funding for observatory efforts is not always achieved. • The local staff is often overloaded with work, and not always trained or high-skilled to sustain marine biodiversity monitoring.
3) Data management:
• Ensure the security of data infrastructure from the sea to the cloud. • Issues with data ownership and accessibility principles and policies. • Language is still a barrier to data standardization. • Data management work overload is constantly expanding.
• Too many new systems and platforms, which may become useless with time. • Lack of clear and easy-to-understand guidelines.
• Most scientists and observatories do not know how to do proper data management. • Data standards can be expensive to implement.
• Oceanography is considered a new discipline in many countries. • Capacity building and outreach may not be considered a priority in some observatories • Lack of communication experts in the program's core team • Language and translating science to a simple narrative • Long-term marine biodiversity monitoring and ocean literacy networks are not always aligned • Lack of basic infrastructure to access educational materials and information (e.g., no electric power or internet) • Some communities lack connectivity and a sense of belonging to the ocean (e.g., do not know how to swim or are scared of the ocean).
• Long-term monitoring can be subject to 'partner fatigue' .
○ What are the success stories? Some examples from the session participants were pointed out as successful marine biodiversity observatories relying on very limited resources, such as the Brazilian coastal and marine LTERs and the South African Environmental Observation Network. Both cases have been able to produce high-quality data about biodiversity patterns and ecosystem functioning, provide information and indicators for managing marine habitats and species, and engage and educate the local community about the importance of marine life. ○ If you have established best practices, where are they deposited?
Most of the methodologies and frameworks carried out by these long-term under-resourced marine observatories are not documented as best practices specific for conditions with limited resources. Information about monitoring methodologies is often described only in scientific manuscripts and/or published in local reports. ○ What are the recommended steps to move forward?
The group suggested a list of the two main best practices that are adequate and highly replicated in these under-resourced regions of the ocean. Here listed by area/theme: 1) Up-to-date low-cost pathways and tools for observing marine life in coastal habitats:
• Underwater imaging and remote sensing.
• Simplified and standardized field protocols.
2) Key strategies to enhance operational capacity and develop highskilled teams in the least-developed areas of the ocean:
• Partner and train local communities.
• Co-design and share existing infrastructure and task teams.
3) Best practices to improve data access and sharing using low-cost operational facilities:
• Cloud system and international-shared servers and data infrastructure. • Benefit from international networks to support capacity building for biodiversity data mobilization. 4) Low-cost initiatives of communication and public outreach that effectively promote observation and conservation of marine life:
• Work with schools including both students and teachers.
• Use social media and low-cost free access audio-visual tools. As highlighted above, keeping this discussion as a priority topic will help the community to engage and organize the content and information about the practices within those marine life observatories. The community would also benefit from having a more diverse group to share knowledge and to formalize practices in platforms that could be accessed at global scales. • What additional functions can the OBPS provide to encourage the broad use and updating of any best practices your community produces? Advertising across different ocean communities.
• Are there existing approaches for formal community endorsement of your best practices? No • Are there any groups within your community whose endorsement of a method/standard/etc would inspire confidence/trust across the community? Why? Yes, the international LTER (long-term ecological research) programme and the Marine Biodiversity Observation Networks (MBON). • Are there any capacity development activities in best practices that are currently active or that you recommend?
The Brazilian coastal and marine LTERs are promoting a series of annual workshops to discuss and document those practices. These events are usually held face-to-face and planned to target national systems, but could be easily replicated and applied to other regions of the world of limited development and resources.
Session. We believe that addressing and developing best practices for marine biodiversity observatories in under-resourced regions of the world are meaningful and urgent. Unfortunately, these limited conditions are true for most areas of the ocean and, eventually, many observatories could eventually face a reduction of funding and operational capacity at any time. Provide specific framework would help the ocean community to adapt to limited situations as well as to amplify and sustain marine biodiversity monitoring networks regardless of the availability of abundant resources _________________________________________________
The co-design of biological and ecological observing, data formatting, forecasting, and knowledge generation and sharing is fundamental to the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (Ocean Decade). The session discussed needs, design, and use of marine conservation areas at different scales, building from local applications, to regional strategies, to understanding what is needed for "30x30" (a call for conserving 30 percent of the world's habitats by 2030). We developed a GOOS Co-design exemplar with an emphasis on stakeholder engagement and capacity development to advance conservation and sustainable development requirements. This seeks to assess need, design, and use of marine conservation areas at different nested geographic scales, building from local applications, to regional strategies, to understanding what is needed globally. The effort goes beyond "problematizing" and outlines activities for Ocean Decade programs for documenting requirements, collecting observations, forecasting, and assessing policy results.
11 October 2022 14:00-15:45 pm EDT
Muller
• Recommendations for the community Use co-design as a continuous, collaborative, iterative process involving all stakeholders. Include a value chain for needed ocean observing. The co-design process provides the steps plan, working directly with local stakeholders, not for science but to understand what science may be needed if they have a serious problem to solve.
Outline the challenges in the co-design process and work on solutions:
-Resourcing -Engaging with users and true engagement -Moving beyond traditional measures of scientific success/output -Understanding value on observing and solutions -Solutions may focus on a subset of multidisciplinary Essential Ocean Variables, including some physical, biogeochemical, and biology/ecology EOVS; co-locating these multidisciplinary observations increases the value of information manyfold as it helps both explain ecological change and to improve models and forecasting. -Sustaining collaborations and delivering solutions -The co-design process should examine pros and cons of an activity; specifically there are many value chains for different communities, and some of them conflict. What brings value to one community can harm another. Best practices should be implemented to benefit people broadly, not narrowly, weighing benefits and losses.
• Recommendations for the IOC's Ocean Best Practice System (OBPS)
• OBPS can help the community document and share specifications of requirements and solutions that GOOS may offer. • OBPS may help GOOS make methods and solutions visible to decision-makers, to those running GOOS Regional Alliances, and help GOOS collect feedback • OBPS may help popularize co-design among different observing systems and networks, including the GOOS Regional Alliances, SOOS, national systems, etc. • OBPS may work with IOC to reach member countries and help them implement and sponsor local co-design approaches. • OBPS can help adopt time-tested methods that users in a range of places and applications have found useful. • OBPS can help ocean observers understand what "value chains" are and how to use them, perhaps using these value chains as models: ■ OBPS: https://workshop5.oceanbestpractices.org/mapping-value ■ VALUABLES Consortium (satellite data values): https://www.rff.org/valuables/ • OBPS may continue to find methods that allow broader application of methods across the value chain and that are affordable for those with less resources • There needs to be more focus among modelers and forecasters on biology, living resources, and biodiversity changes. This includes links between land and ocean, and ocean areas from the coast to the interior, surface to bottom. • OBPS needs to facilitate discussion on co-design around the world • OBPS needs to facilitate inclusion, equity, diversity in working groups and programs
Marine life is fundamental to the well-being of communities everywhere. The Ocean Decade provides only a temporary platform to advance programs of co-design that support social and economic needs. OBPS and the Ocean Decade need to have a vision that goes beyond 2030 to ensure the positive partnerships, strategies and outcomes that we are planning today are permanently implemented around the world. ____________________________________________
This session plans to examine the links between marine scientific practice on the one hand and policies on the other. Such links occur in many different ways. Scientific results can form the foundation for particular ocean policies. In turn, ocean-related policies require science to deliver on policy objectives.
The establishment of best practices is one method of improving this interaction between ocean science and policy. Best practices can function not only as standards of how to conduct particular sustainable ocean observations, but also illustrations of how to place the observations in the context of ocean policies.
The development of best practices should take into account the normative value of obligations to use best environmental practices and capabilities to achieve results, and best practices of how to bring the scientific results to policy and decision-makers. This session hopes to shed light on these issues from scientific, legal, and policy perspectives.
How policy deals with best practices from science October 13th 8 -10 How science brings its best practices to policy-& decision-makers
Noon - International legal framework for ocean observing & the role of international organisations -Yoshinobu Takei, Keio University, Japan A clear distinction has to be made between the legal regime that regulates remote sensing of the ocean -air law and the law of outer space -and the one that regulates these of research vessel and other marine observing platforms -the law of the sea. Within the former, certain principles have been developed that are applicable remote sensing of the ocean in the 1980s. With the latter, Part XIII of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC) deals with marine scientific research in different maritime zones. The rules in this part are considered to be customary international law but it is not clear if that applies generally to ocean observing as well. Depending on the zone in which the ocean observing takes place, the observing needs either explicit or implicit consent from the coastal state. In general, states should promote marine scientific research. Exceptions to the rules exist as soon as the connection with the exploitation of natural resources surfaces. Environmental impacts of ocean observing are also dealt with in the LOSC. Other international conventions contain also rules concerning ocean observing and the Argo Notification Scheme is a special example of an enabling regime. The International Maritime Organization works on the safety of navigation of unmanned vehicles.
Hydrographic surveys also need to be distinguished from marine scientific research as they are generally considered to concern the freedom of navigation. Ocean observing might sometimes fall under hydrographic surveys. More contentious is operational oceanography, which the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United States, for example, consider to be outside the framework of marine scientific research but the European Union does not agree.
Within the United Nations system, its General Assembly, the Secretariat´s Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, the WMO, UNESCO´s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) and the LOSC´s state parties meeting deal, among others, with ocean observing. The IOC and the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea make use of the special rules for ocean observing within international organisations. Region-specific solutions might only work when participants are seriously determined.
observing into policy -Iain Shepherd, European Commission, Directorate-General Maritime Affairs and Fisheries The relationship between policy and science depends often on what the truth is. When it comes to fisheries science, the European Union spends more on the collection of data than on research. Fisheries managers do not like wide bands of uncertainty. Collection of data in general should not just be left to governments. The question remains what policymakers consider a useful dataset. It also depends on what we believe. The relationship between bottom trawling and carbon has been claimed to be both under-as well as overestimated. For blue carbon, policymakers would need more measurements and more consistency between these.
The complexity of ocean observing has to do with the multiple disciplines that are involved in the collection of both in situ as well as remote observations. On top of that, there are multiple numerical models as well as multiple spatiotemporal models. There exist gaps in coverage and some processes are insufficiently observed. Most observations cannot be used to their full extent and sometimes, a duplication of efforts occurs. Thus, one needs agreement on a common agenda and principles as well as clear design and implementation and robust governance.
Part XIII of the LOSC is incompatible with the operational reality of ocean observing. For instance, advance notice is incompatible with sustained ocean observing for some platforms because it is difficult to plan far ahead. Participants of a workshop at the IOC in February 2020 dealt with ocean observing within national jurisdiction and developed solution spaces. Significantly, ocean observing is legally not always marine scientific research. States have developed a practice over the last four decades that marine meteorological data does not fall under Part XIII of the LOSC. Hurricanes need to be forecasted to save human lives. The measurement of Essential Climate Variables of the Global Ocean Observing System might also save lives.
People who conduct citizen science would fall under the legislation of the coastal state or the flag state. The phenomenon does however tie in with the fact that Part XIII of the LOSC is incompatible with the operational reality. The International Hydrographic Organization deals with crowdsourced bathymetry. This project deals with monitoring occuring now in one port in Italy, Spain as well as in Colombia. All information is available on websites, based on the instrumentation. This real-time monitoring is extremely useful in managing ports, for example in the case of an oil spill. The first thing that managers now do in the morning is checking the website with new data. Yet there is no easy and robust method to do this right from the start; it is not optimal. There is a need for specialists. The plan is to go from the oceans forecasts we have to the ocean forecasts we want. There are still gaps but there are also opportunities as the digital twin of the ocean and the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, for instance CoastPredict. This will all help to work towards a solution, where a crucial pillar is the community. Operation Clean Sweep (OCS) is a global process with some Brazilian aspects. In the plastic-producing industry, there is much loss of pellets. They enter the environment and eventually also the ocean. In Santos Bay, close to Sao Paulo, pellets have been found up to two metres deep in the sediment. OCS has no additional costs for companies; costs are internalised by the plastic sector. There is much interaction with stakeholders. In Brazil, there exists an audited, transparent and certified programme. There is no incentive for greenwashing and best practices are formulated. Measures can be simple and inexpensive. There exists a five-step plan for the Zero Pellet programme of OCS. It might take up to two years to get from the first to the last step.
A lead author of an IPCC report needs to allocate about one-fifth of her or his time to that. For a co-chair of a working group, that is about half her or his time. Yet one does get publications out of the IPCC work, possibly also in better journals.
Within the IPCC, there is a complex, multi-perspective view of best practices. There are best practices in communication but communication in general requires talent. Best practices also involve callibration. Companies do give input to Ocean Best Practices. Best practices are never ending, ever evolving processes. This can lead to harmonisation. There exists best practices for citizen science.
Operational Forecasting
Operational ocean forecasting systems combine models and observations to forecast the ocean state. Predictions may be at local, regional or global scale, and for physics, biogeochemistry, ice or waves. Systems should provide reliable and accurate information, allowing end users to make decisions for societal and/or economic benefit. Best practices can help with sharing expertise, providing information and confidence to users, and better integration with the observing community and other members of the operational value chain. This session welcomes contributions on all aspects of best practices for ocean forecasting, and has two goals in particular. Firstly, to ensure that best practices fully account for the needs of local communities around the world, particularly those who do not yet have access to reliable ocean predictions, but who could potentially benefit the most from them. Secondly, to inform the definition of best practices on ocean forecasting system reporting. This includes permitting comparison of ocean forecasting systems as well as presentation of this information to users and stakeholders.
Operational • Are there any groups within your community whose endorsement of a method/standard/etc would inspire confidence/trust across the community? Why?
• ETOOFS -the relevant Expert Team
Organizational best practices to foster cooperation between disciplines, institutions, platforms and networks
The integration of multi-platform in-situ and remote observations with numerical models is one key challenge today in ocean science, given the well-established, platform-driven ocean observing networks and forecasting systems. Despite significant advances over the last two decades in more cooperation across the ocean observing activities, the ocean observing system still suffers from organizational silos due to independent and often disconnected initiatives, and the absence of a well-established overall governance framework. The goal of this session is to share initial advances and receive feedback from the community on the possible ways to generate systemic and behavioral transformation and create the enabling conditions for the ocean observing system to become more federated.
Session
The session began with the presentation by Adèle Révelard (SOCIB) on her initial advances and findings from the EuroSea project on the possible ways to create the enabling conditions for the ocean observing system at large to become more transdisciplinary and federated. Adèle proposed to take inspiration from the Collective Impact Organization model, which encompasses both top-down planning and alignment with community-based learning and engagement. The proposed actions implied innovative actions at the governance, funding and management levels in order to generate systemic and behavioral changes.
The second talk was given by Lucie Cocquempot (Ifremer), who shared her initial reflections on how to improve coordination between ocean observing activities at the institutional level, taking Ifremer as a case study. It was interesting to see that very similar challenges and issues occur at the institutional, national, regional and international levels, and that similar findings are reached. At the institutional level, Lucie also came to the conclusion that both top-down and bottom-up approaches should be simultaneously in place in order to take the benefit of both of them.
The following open discussion with participants highlighted the following conclusions:
• A hybrid management model, encompassing both top-down and community-based management approaches, would be needed in order to foster cooperation and collaboration within the ocean observing system at large and within institutions • Need for cultural change in order to make our organization more agile and less afraid of change • The lack of strong leadership was perceived as one of the principal difficulties for implementing a collective impact approach • Training researchers in management, ethics, and coordination skills is crucial • A new culture should be adopted where it is ok to fail • There is a strong need to change the way we assess success and careers • The reform of the research assessment system might help to move towards a more "integrative culture", but this will not be sufficient
• A fully integrated ocean observing system should be data centric, rather than policy centric • We need to develop new tools and indicators to measure the addedvalue of collaboration
• Recommendations for the IOC's Ocean Best Practice System (OBPS) OBPS, because of its transversal nature, is an ideal network to discuss and advance on the possible ways to move towards a more integrated ocean observing system.
Towards reproducible community-adopted QC best practices for chemical EOVs
The scope of these theme session was to get to know which are the most important QC test that the community should run for chemical variables in order to build global standard procedures that could be formally documented thorough a best-practices guide. In order to do this, during the session, we analised the different metrics applied for QC testing of chemical data in different global databases (i.e, GLODAP and WOD), presenting onlineavailable tools for QC (i.e., AtlantOS) and evaluated the difference between the results obtained in chemical variables from the different databases.
QC of Chemical Ocean Profile Data 13/10/2 022 14:00 -15:30
The time of the session was extended half an hour (until ~ 16:00 UTC) to allow for a more in-depth debate. • Recommendations for the IOC's Ocean Best Practice System (OBPS)
• Recommending contribution to the creation of best-practices guide. • Support on the publication of best-practices guide for oxygen measurements.
During the debate, Dr. Hernan Garcia proposed to create a best-practices document for oxygen measurements. Participants were recommended to spread the message and contact Dr. Garcia or any of the session conveners in order to proceed with this future publication. _______________________________________
Best Practices in Seagrass Monitoring: Towards Global and Long-term Monitoring System
The session covered the three main topics regarding seagrass monitoring by three distinguished speakers. Dr Masahiro Nakaoka briefly introduced the general seagrass ecosystem which covers their ecosystem services and value, their threats and ends with the emphasis of developing good practices for monitoring, research, and conversation management forming the ideal triangle of ecosystem management. Our second speaker, Dr Anchana Prathep, focuses her talk on monitoring and assessment of blue carbon in the seagrass system. Her examples of work done in Thailand on seagrass biomass, diversity, and carbon in sediment set a good example on how simple tolls can be used to monitor carbon storage within the seagrass system. Lastly, Dr Miguel Fortes introduced and shared his examples of setting up community practices as a best approach to seagrass monitoring. He brought up the important issues of having good values such as respect, mutual understanding, participatory and localized approach towards sustaining a good monitoring. A discussion was done at the end of the workshop with recommendations given. This workshop aspires to introduce protocols for seagrass monitoring that have been adopted in seagrass areas across different countries. The protocol aims to be part of the ocean best practices system to establish a standardize and comparable data of biodiversity, patterns and changes to the seagrass area over a wide are of the global coasts. The protocol should be simple and easy to be adopted by both researchers and citizen scientists to create a longterm monitoring of the coastal areas. In addition, to biodiversity monitoring, additional best practices on blue carbon measurement will also be shared during the workshop to estimate the total blue carbon storage in the seagrass area, These best practices will be able to deliver comparable data abd global pattern changes of biodiversity and carbon storage in the seabgrass area for stakeholders, policy makers and public to make informed decision making for successful management and sustainability of coastal areas. The framework will also provide reserchers with up-to-date and long-term data to accelerate research and predictions on changes of the coastal ecosystem. • Recommendations for the community In order to establish best practices for seagrass monitoring across the region and globe requires extensive communication and workshops attended by experts and more important the younger researchers for capacity building and consensus. The current methods and practices for seagrass monitoring needs to be co-designed taking account of many more stakeholders apart from academics. And also, the continuity and sustainability of the existing monitoring network only lasts for a short period with constant changes of methods led by different parties. Apart from these challenges, the current monitoring system lacks standardization, organization and database for data storage as well as connecting the science of seagrass monitoring to actual workable policy. Two network have been quite successful being the recognized seagrass monitoring standards thus far namely: SeagrassNET (https://www.seagrassnet.org/) and Coordinated Global Research Assessment of Seagrass System (C-GRASS) (https://scorint.org/group/158/). Newer monitoring system in seagrass ecosystem is the Coastal Blue Carbon assessment methodology established by IUCN (https://www.iucn.org/content/coastal-blue-carbon-manual).
The workshop recommends strengthening the engagement of existing networks and revitalizing the connection after years of neglect. A new branch of seagrass monitoring network should include blue carbon assessment as it is one of the most important topics revolving around seagrass currently.
• Recommendations for the IOC's Ocean Best Practice System (OBPS) Existing networks and methods may differ slightly making data incomparable sometimes from different localities. Parameters collected also suffer great inconsistencies due to disparities of equipment capabilities and experts in different countries. OBPS would be a great platform to unify these different methods and networks to create global best practices for seagrass and blue carbon monitoring. A continued capacity building among young researchers in seagrass monitoring is lacking and needed to establish sustainable monitoring system 8. Future Collaborations Establishing of Blue Carbon Assessment and Monitoring in seagrass ecosystem starting from southeast asia and expanding them into a global network with appropriate best practices both in scientific methodology and best practices working with the community and other stakeholders. ______________________________________ In close complement, Standards are designed to ensure comparability, metrological consistency (reproducibility + traceability + uncertainty evaluations), and support interoperability and data exchange. Standards interact with best practices (as well as other methods) in a variety of ways, but typically through calibration of equipment or, secondarily, through validation of outcomes. When methods are developed and performed with reference to standardsbe they reference materials, common vocabularies, or data specifications -a methodological process of high rigor and transferability is formed, which is a cornerstone of any robust best practice. In this session, participants will discuss how to increase the synergies between standards and methods.
• What are the opportunities to use (C)RM or ISO guides in marine BPs? • Do we have an overview about current use of Standards (e.g. ISO, CRM) in marine science?
• How can the exchange between marine BP creators and Metrology be improved?
• How can the standards organizations draft practices, which are similar to ocean best practices be merged into the OBPS processes?
The session format included keynote presentations to introduce the session Topics and inspiring discussions among all session participants. Next steps to move the synergy between BP and Standards forward will be identified.
Linking reported about the approaches taken ad-hoc during the pandemic to develop reference material (RM) for carbon observations. The shortcoming in RM prompted for action which now leads to the establishment of three global hubs that then produce comparable RM and thus significantly save costs and time and promote sustainability. Also, this approach may be used as a Blue print for other RM's (e.g. nutrients). The final two presentations were by Rajesh Nair (OGS) and Iwao Ueki (JAMSTEC) on projects (MINKE) and organisational (Oceanographic Society of Japan) approaches to create a framework for making extensive use of Standards and Best Practices. In the following discussion session, the themes were around the needs to improve and fund a standardization framework for ocean observations e.g. via a stronger link within nations ocean observing and metrological agencies. The increasing need to serve national targets and actions into global assessment (e.g. SDG's, carbon and GHG national action plans within the Paris Agreement) require trustworthy information that are only achievable via application of global RM and following global Best Practices. Finally, the need for equitable access to reference material was empasized, again with reference to the UN Decade, the SDGs and the national climate action plans.
• Recommendations for the community: see text above • Recommendations for the IOC's Ocean Best Practice System (OBPS) see text above ____________________________________ In both Plenary 2a and 2b, a poll requested participants to identify words/phrases representing their priorities and recommendations to OBPS for next steps. The Word Clouds below reflect the similarities in both.
The workshop provided an opportunity for interested stakeholders to discuss best practices in the marine environment, with a goal of developing a framework/method for establishing best practices in ocean observing, and for gaining endorsement for the practices from the community. There was wide recognition of the benefits of establishing and using best practices, including:
• They promote efficient and effective operations • They improve system interoperability • They improve data comparability, which increases accessibility and ease of use • They provide certainty, which may promote sensor/hardware development • They build trust, leading to higher funding success and streamlined regulatory approval • They enable new people to engage in marine observing with a high probability of collecting useful data Theme sessions provided focused forums to explore opportunities to advance the development of best practices. Through these forums a common ambition emerged to move toward global procedures and standards that can be formally documented through best practices guides. There were several key recommendations:
• Best practices should be implemented for broad benefit, considering the value chain for the required observations and weighing benefits and losses • Best practices should be developed using co-design as a continuous, collaborative, iterative process involving all stakeholders • Best practices should be standardised at necessary temporal and spatial scales • A single best practice rarely is applicable globally and may need to be adapted locally to infrastructure availability and societal needs • Decision trees should be used in conjunction with best practices • Best practices should be accessible and provided in plain language to promote good quality data which should be FAIR • The capabilities and practices of existing initiatives/programs provide valuable starting points for best practices • Operational needs in modelling and forecasting should be considered in developing best practices -we need better, more collaborative links between industry, science, management and operations Theme sessions also provided opportunities to consider how to best use the OBPS to encourage wider distribution and use of these standardised protocols. Key recommendations from these discussions include:
• Ensure long-term stewardship of best practices after groups that develop them dissolve • Help networks of communities link and develop strategies for interoperability • Work on approaches to accurately tag, filter, and layer metadata information to easily guide users • Continue to provide a platform where digital assets such as protocols can be open access and following FAIR principles, and provide guidance on the possible endorsement processes available to the community • Promote Community-Based Monitoring (CBM) and Citizen Science (CS) All groups engaged in conversation on formal endorsement of a particular practice. Some groups have strategies implemented for endorsement to ensure interoperability and trust. These examples were an important element of the workshop and serve as role models for other groups interested in promoting such standardisation.
Another discussion involved the desire to provide support in different languages to facilitate local engagement with OBPS and adoption of best practices. Many different sectors of stakeholders, in operations, research, management, industry, and indeed, the general public, want sets of standard operating practices that have been vetted, endorsed, and made widely available for use. OBPS can help by bringing best practices and standards into a harmonised format that serves everyone. The key lesson provided through OBPS Workshop VI is that best practice protocols should service communities in different countries, and be simple and easy to be adopted by all ocean stakeholders.
PLENARY 2 (a and b) 19 October 2022In the final Plenary, the participants focused on the workshop goals: to guide the development of best practices and operating practices, to promote their documentation, and to share them widely using the Ocean Best Practices System. Some groups are more advanced in this process than others.