MASTS Annual Science Conference 2016
The Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTS) held its 6th annual science meeting (ASM) in Glasgow this year.
The title for this year's ASM was "Our marine environment - a shared resource". The talks covered different areas from marine spatial planning, to viruses plasticity, to climate change and ocean acidification. The span of disciplines covered is actually wider than the one I present here, but I will focus on the ones I managed to attend.
I contributed with a talk for the "General Session" about "Linking "Linking variations in coastal productivity across the Northeast Pacific through satellite ocean colour". This is a project I have been working on together with Dr Neil Banas for my postdoctoral research. I will be updating the project goals soon.
There were stalls about oil, the amazing CPR from SAHFOS, and many more, that are sure to please all areas of research and business presented this year's ASM. The poster scheme at this ASM was new to me, but proved efficient. The organisation opted for e-posters, thus helping saving our oceans.
Even though MASTS ASM is a small meeting, I am positively surprised by the number of covered disciplines. Multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary (more on these in another post) are concepts I find crucial to help us scientists assess the causes and impacts of climate change, and MASTS ASM proved that there is hope in such approach when scientists from all different fields of expertise actively interact in such a small conference.
I just hope that collaborations from these types of meetings are not coming too late. For some areas, it is already, but we should not lose hope.
Here are some food for thought from my favourite quotes (forgive me for missing some of the authors or if I got the talk wrong):
"There are more virus on Earth than stars." in Melinda Choua's talk.
"There is no future, only possible futures." in Robert Wilson's talk.
"There is only one earth, with only one history, and we get only one chance to record it. Ideas not followed through can be taken up later. A record not made is gone for good." from an editorial article (Nature, 2007) in David Mills' talk.
"With each generation, the expectation of various ecological conditions shifts. The results is that standards are lowered almost imperceptibly." by Daniel Pauly in Douglas Speirs' talk.
