COMARGE

Dr.Baban Ingole attend the international workshop of the CoML’s new project Continental Margin Ecosystem (COMARGE) held at Institut Oceanographique, Paris, 6-7 July 2006

Dr.Baban Ingole attend the international workshop of the CoML’s new project Continental Margin Ecosystem (COMARGE) held at Institut Oceanographique, Paris, 6-7 July 2006

Dr.Baban Ingole, of National Institute of Oceanography, attend the international workshop of the CoML’s new project Continental Margin Ecosystem (COMARGE) held at Institut Oceanographique, Paris, 6-7 July 2006

The workshop hosted by the Institut Océanographique in Paris was the second international workshop organized by COMARGE after the Rio Meeting. The Paris workshop was meant to introduce the objectives of COMARGE to a larger audience of about 40 scientists from almost all countries that had expertise in margin studies in terms of taxonomy and ecology and further discuss those objectives. The general aims were to share interest and agree on a list of major scientific questions in order to plan the future actions in a collaborative way.

The workshop was more specifically intended to:

Bring together deep-sea scientists from all continents, who had positively answered the call for contribution to COMARGE sent in February 2006 (CoML/COMARGE: Towards a globalization of the project);
Identify key questions, existing and planned studies, and data available on continental margins worldwide, who could contribute, on a collaborative basis, to the synthesis on benthic diversity patterns and processes aimed by COMARGE;
Further develop the questions addressed by the project
And finally propose concrete plans on how to solve those questions within the Census of Marine Life time frame 2006-2010.

The workshop was attended by 36 scientists from 18 countries (cf. List of Participants).

The workshop allowed i) defining four themes that should be addressed by COMARGE in the future, ii) planning actions for years 2006-2008 in order to progress on each of these themes and iii) identifying leaders for each action.

Themes	Actions	Leaders
A: Large scale biodiversity patterns and processes	1) To identify suitable data, taxonomically and geographically 2) To organize a workshop on Large-Scale Margin Patterns, preliminary analysis of actual datasets	Dr Gary Poore Dr Andy Gooday Dr Ann Vanreusel
B: Landscape-scale classification, habitat mapping	To organize a workshop on this theme in early 2007	Dr Alan Hughes Erwan Le Guilloux Dr Anthony Grehan
C: Habitat heterogeneity in relation to regional diversity	1) For each habitat, identify data available for comparisons 2) To plan analysis workshop(s) for 2008	Dr Lisa Levin, Dr Thomas Schlacher, Dr Karine Olu, Dr Javier Sellanes, Dr Andy Gooday, Dr Craig Smith, Dr Michael Klages
D: Anthropogenic impacts on margins	1) To look for information/data available on impact intensities and effects 2) To map impact intensities for selected kind of human activities 3) To map Marine Protected Areas on continental margins	Dr Baban Ingole