Members of EuroGO-SHIP’s 14-partner consortium gathered in Venice, Italy for the project’s Second Annual Meeting, hosted at Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR-ISMAR) in the historic Arsenale di Venezia, June 25-26,2024. The hybrid-event offered colleagues the opportunity to present progress and results, and to collaborate through lively discussions and activities to gain a better understanding of the current gaps within the ocean observation value chain, in particular how ship-based hydrography needs to be supported.
Highlights and key take-aways include:
o Best practices, standards, and traceability pilot activities for salinity, nutrients and carbon are providing good insights and proving that there is a strong need for ongoing piloting to determine additional best practices for the ship-based hydrography community beyond the project’s timeline.
o In making the science case for EuroGO-SHIP, an excellent report was provided on assessing statistical features of trend detection to increase understanding of ocean properties.
o A demonstration of the bespoke EuroGO-SHIP QC software App for running quality control in ship-board labs, in support of ensuring the quality of carbon data, showed that it is an excellent new tool to streamline the flow of accurate data.
o Through EuroGO-SHIP support the RV Tom Crean (MI) has recently been equipped to facilitate real-time data, making Ireland the sixth country in Europe providing this service along with Belgium, France, Germany, Norway and the UK.
o A vigorous discussion defining costing models in support of enabling access to shared facilities showed how the complexities of this exercise in terms of skills, equipment, transportation and insurance factors.
o Thinking outside the box: when looking at how to enable water sampling for restricted budgets, wine bags have been identified as a more economical resource than traditional sampling bags. A test will validate the statement: If it is good enough for wine, it should be good for sea water.
o Gaining a clear picture of all ship-based hydrography activity being conducted in Europe is paramount not only for EuroGO-SHIP but for the wider ocean observation community.
o To understand how best to standardise processes, side-by-side comparisons of activities such as sampling, are more effective when done through observation of these processes rather than relying on written documents as steps can often go unreported.
o It is important to firmly establish ongoing links with end-users who have responded to surveys and participated in stakeholder workshops.
In summary, EuroGO-SHIP has made excellent progress in enhancing real time data, quality and best-practices, and with its objectives to engage with hydrographers and data users to co-design the right solutions toward strengthening services in support of the EU Mission “Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2050” and the wider objectives of the Green Deal.
The annual meeting was booked-ended by two significant stakeholder workshops: The Black Sea Observation Workshop and The Research Infrastructure Workshop.