Principal Investigator workshop on Ocean Acidification – Mombasa, Kenya

BERI participated in the Principal Investigator workshop on Ocean Acidification on 12-14 February 2019 in Mombasa, Kenya. The workshop was supported by WIOMSA in partnership with IOC-UNESCO to bring together the Principal Investigators of the OA projects in these six countries to present and discuss about their projects, data needed and data sharing strategies; site selection and frequency of sampling and joint activities.

WIOMSA in partnership with the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of OC-UNESCO (IOC-UNESCO), the IAEA Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre (OA-ICC) and the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOA-ON), welcomed proposals for establishing ocean acidification observation systems in the field, investigating biological response to ocean acidification using experimental set-ups in the laboratory, or a combination of both from institutions in the WIO region, among which BERI.

This meeting allowed the different project leaders to meet experts in the region, connect with international experts and to establish new scientific relationships in the region of the Western Indian Ocean. The three-day workshop was used to provide:

Introduction into global ocean acidification resources and networks, e.g. GOA-ON, OA-ICC, IOC, communication websites etc.
Introduction into the SDG indicator 14.3.1 methodology, the related metadata and data files
Information about ocean acidification experimentation
Lecture about uncertainty in ocean acidification measurements
Identification of existing and missing human capacities – Identification of required human capacity trainings
Identification of existing technical capacities – Identification of possible collaboration to use existing technical capacities – Identification of individual equipment needs
Identification of existing data management capacities – identification of needed training and technical needs
Common timeline for joint activities (workshops, publications, outreach)
Introduction to ocean acidification and related communication activities/possibilities

Each project individual was invited to present the specific objective, species/areas which are in the focus of the investigation, instrumentation currently available and planned to be purchased, the planned parameters to be observed in order to characterize the carbonate system in their environment/experiment and the related data management plan.