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The Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) and its partners have worked together over the past decade to break down barriers between open-ocean and coastal observing, between scientific disciplines, and between operational and research institutions. Here we discuss some GOOS successes and challenges from the past decade, and present ideas for moving forward, including highlights of the GOOS 2030 Strategy, published in 2019. The OceanObs’09 meeting in Venice in 2009 resulted in a remarkable consensus on the need for a common set of guidelines for the global ocean observing community. Work following the meeting led to development of the Framework for Ocean Observing (FOO) published in 2012 and adopted by GOOS as a foundational document that same year. The FOO provides guidelines for the setting of requirements, assessing technology readiness, and assessing the usefulness of data and products for users. Here we evaluate successes and challenges in FOO implementation and consider ways to ensure broader use of the FOO principles. The proliferation of ocean observing activities around the world is extremely diverse and not managed, or even overseen by, any one entity. The lack of coherent governance has resulted in duplication and varying degrees of clarity, responsibility, coordination and data sharing. GOOS has had considerable success over the past decade in encouraging voluntary collaboration across much of this broad community, including increased use of the FOO guidelines and partly effective governance, but much remains to be done. Here we outline and discuss several approaches for GOOS to deliver more effective governance to achieve our collective vision of fully meeting society’s needs. What would a more effective and well-structured governance arrangement look like? Can the existing system be modified? Do we need to rebuild it from scratch? We consider the case for evolution versus revolution. Community-wide consideration of these governance issues will be timely and important before, during and following the OceanObs’19 meeting in September 2019.

One of the main challenges in assessing marine biodiversity is the lack of consistent approaches to monitor it. This threatens to undermine ocean best practice in marine monitoring, as it impedes a reduction in the bias and variance of sampled data and restricts the confidence in the advice that can be given. In particular, there is potential for confounding between the monitoring methods, their measured ecological properties, and the questions they seek to answer. Australia has developed significant long-term marine monitoring and observing programs and has one of the largest marine estates, including the world’s largest representative network of marine parks. This new network will require ongoing monitoring and evaluation, beyond what direct funding can support, which needs to be integrated in a standardized way with other national programs to develop sufficient monitoring capacity. The aim of this paper is to describe the process undertaken in developing a suite of field manuals that provide Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for marine sampling in Australian waters so that data are comparable over time and space, thereby supporting a robust, cost-effective, and objective national monitoring program. We encourage readers to refer to the complete manuals of interest at www.nespmarine.edu.au/field-manuals. We generally limit SOP development to benthic or demersal sampling, (multibeam, autonomous underwater vehicles, baited remoted underwater video (BRUV), towed imagery, grabs and box corers, sleds and trawls), with a few exceptions (e.g., pelagic BRUVs). Collaboration was a key characteristic of our approach so rather than single groups trying to impose their standards, more than 70 individuals from over 30 organizations contributed to the first version of this field manual package. We also discuss the challenges that arose while developing these national SOPs, the associated solutions that were implemented, and the plans for ensuring their long-term maintenance and national and international uptake. We anticipate that this paper will contribute to international collaborations by evoking valuable suggestions and sharing of lessons learnt from other national initiatives so that we might work toward a global ocean best practice for biological and geoscientific monitoring of the marine environment. Publisher PDF

In this paper we review the technologies available to make globally quantitative observations of particles in general—and plankton in particular—in the world oceans, and for sizes varying from sub-microns to centimeters. Some of these technologies have been available for years while others have only recently emerged. Use of these technologies is critical to improve understanding of the processes that control abundances, distributions and composition of plankton, provide data necessary to constrain and improve ecosystem and biogeochemical models, and forecast changes in marine ecosystems in light of climate change. In this paper we begin by providing the motivation for plankton observations, quantification and diversity qualification on a global scale. We then expand on the state-of-the-art, detailing a variety of relevant and (mostly) mature technologies and measurements, including bulk measurements of plankton, pigment composition, uses of genomic, optical and acoustical methods as well as analysis using particle counters, flow cytometers and quantitative imaging devices. We follow by highlighting the requirements necessary for a plankton observing system, the approach to achieve it and associated challenges. We conclude with ranked action-item recommendations for the next 10 years to move toward our vision of a holistic ocean-wide plankton observing system. Particularly, we suggest to begin with a demonstration project on a GO-SHIP line and/or a long-term observation site and expand from there, ensuring that issues associated with methods, observation tools, data analysis, quality assessment and curation are addressed early in the implementation. Global coordination is key for the success of this vision and will bring new insights on processes associated with nutrient regeneration, ocean production, fisheries and carbon sequestration. ISSN:2296-7745