Today's speakers: Ricardo Letelier, Scott Durski

Next Meeting: February 7, 2002 in Burt 176 at 3pm.  We'll hear OcSci'02 talks 
from Lee Karp-Boss, Jack Barth, Michael Ott and Malinda Sutor.

March Meeting: tentatively scheduled for March 14, 2002 in Burt 176 at 3pm.
Presentations by Jim Moum (acoustics from Thompson) and Yvette Spitz 
(ecosystem modeling).

Video conferencing:  Our UNC colleagues inquired about video conferencing
since non-OSU COASTers weren't getting the benefit of our monthly meetings.
The new ECC2 conference room will NOT have video capability, but we can
certainly do a voice link from either Burt 176 or the new ECC2 conf room.
Roger suggested putting important graphics up on the web before the meeting.

T-SHIRTS are in and have been delivered to PIs.  PIs please pay Jack when
convenient.  A second order is going in so if we missed someone or you'd
like a different size, please let Jack know.

Upon Kathleen Ruttenberg's suggestion it was announced that COASTers might
like to get together at the OcSci'02 meeting.  Best time will probably be
at noon on Thursday (or 5pm Thurs) after the COAST and WEST CoOP session
on Thursday morning.  We can announce when/where at the COAST OcSci session.

A DRAFT Data Acknowledgement Policy was presented.  It will be available
soon on the COAST web site under "Planning documents".  It is patterned
quite closely after the GLOBEC policy.  Please comment to Jack, Pat or John
with the aim to have a policy which we can agree on at our March meeting.

Data Inventory:  We would like to assemble a data inventory of all the
data collected during COAST.  This will be posted on the web site.  Jack
will send around a template/example after Ocean Sciences with input due
before the March meeting.  We'll ask what, when, where, etc. and also
ask when the data will be available for collaborative research.  Once the
inventory is in place we'll assemble a list of natural data comparisons
that could be made (e.g., acoustics from each ship, ADCP velocity maps
compared with radar velocity maps, etc.).

Timeline:  Jack forgot to show Sara Haines' nice COAST 2001 timeline, but
it is viewable at (http://www.unc.edu/depts/marine/cool/COAST/timeline.jpg).
Sara specifically requests locations and times of the Thompson activities
so that she can add them to the plot.  Pat was asked (after the meeting)
to provide this information.  When a new plot is generated, it will be
posted on the COAST web site.

Ricardo Letelier presentation:

Main objective:  Characterize the variability of the physiological state of 
phytoplankton assemblages and how this variability affects the biomass 
production and distribution in the study region.

Ship measurements approach:
- Characterize the scales of variability of phytoplankton photosynthetic 
  parameters using Fast Repetition Rate fluorometry.
- Validate these measurements at sea using 14C P vs E incubations, absorption 
  spectra, and pigment composition (HPLC)

Mooring observations:
- Downwelling irradiance sensors at 7 wavelengths to monitor temporal changes 
  in upper water column chl a concentration and fluorescence yield 

Drifters:
- Same as for moorings but in a Lagrangian mode

Remote sensing:
- Using MODIS observations to develop large scale synoptic maps

Ricardo covered a wide range of research interests being pursued by his
and Mark Abbott's research group.  Among these were Fast Repetition Rate
fluorometry applied to the water pumped onboard the Thompson from Burke
Hales' profiler.  Together with underwater PAR, Ricardo hopes to construct
3D fields of primary productivity.  He will ground truth those results
with traditional P vs E productivity experiments conducted during the August
COAST cruise.  They are looking at HPLCs for phytoplankton assemblage info
and at absorption pad spectra for comparison with ac-9 results (Cowles et al.).
The moored radiometers appeared to work well, but there is some work to
do cleaning up the data set.  They also deployed 4 instrumented bio-optical
drifters and data from those are available.  Lastly, the MODIS satellite color 
data products were demonstrated.

Scott Durski presentation:

Scott is a physical oceanographer working with John Allen on numerical modeling
of coastal circulation in the COAST region.  He presented results from using
the ROMS model to study instabilities on the upwelling fronts off Oregon.
He is also investigating the use of non-hydrostatic models for examining
coastal processes.  Scott will present his results at OcSci'02.