Date: Thursday, October 20, 2022
Time: 1:30 – 2:50pm
Location: VBCC – L1 Ballroom 3
Moderator: Carl Gouldman, Director NOAA IOOS
Panelists:
Chris Ostrander, Executive Director, Marine Technology Society
Jan Newton, Executive Director, NANOOS
Gerhard Kuska, Executive Director, MARACOOS
Liza Wright-Fairbanks, Sea Grant Knauss Fellow, NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program
Our oceans are under severe threat as the changing climate, ocean, and Great Lakes conditions pose growing challenges to the nation’s Blue Economy and the communities that depend economically on those industries. The rapid and accelerating pace of climate change is driving increased demand for information about the ocean and along our coasts. NOAA answers that call as one of the world’s largest providers of climate, weather, and marine data, including forecasts, predictions, and outlooks for sea surface temperature, precipitation, water level, pH, salinity, surface currents, and harmful algal blooms. The New Blue Economy is building on traditional ocean and coastal uses while promoting the gathering and use of new and enhanced ocean and coastal information to identify societal challenges that, when addressed, drive the acceleration of ocean and coastal data and products.
This Town Hall will provide a forum for academia, government, and industry to inform NOAA and the greater Blue Economy community on approaches currently being used and why collaboration around data is essential for the New Blue Economy. This session will task the presenters to present their views on the following questions:
• How can all stakeholders realize the full potential of the New Blue Economy?
• What does a productive public/private partnership for the New Blue Economy look like? What are the key characteristics? How might we replicate it?
Moderator: Carl Gouldman, Director, NOAA IOOS
Carl Gouldman took the helm as Director of the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS ® ) Office in February 2017. Prior to becoming the director, Carl served as the Deputy Director of the program since June 2014 and has been in NOAA since 2000. U.S. IOOS is our eyes on the ocean, coasts, and Great Lakes, and we are an integrated network of people and technology gathering observing data and developing tracking and predictive tools to benefit the economy, the environment, and public safety at home, across the nation, and around the globe
Before NOAA, Carl spent 3 years in the education department at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation where he led field programs teaching students about bay ecology and conservation. He holds a B.S. in political science from Duke University and a Masters (MEM) in Coastal Environmental Management from the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke.
Panelists:
Chris Ostrander, Executive Director, Marine Technology Society
Jan Newton, Executive Director, NANOOS
Dr. Jan Newton is a Senior Principal Oceanographer and Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington. She is a biological oceanographer with research on coastal dynamics, including effects from climate and humans on water properties and plankton. She has focused on efforts to build ocean observing and connections to society. She is the Executive Director of NANOOS, the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems, part of U.S. IOOS.
She is also a co-director of the Washington Ocean Acidification Center and a co-chair of the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network. Her expertise is in linking observations and needs across scales from local to regional to global, and engaging with partners, be they tribes or shellfish growers in the PNW to optimize NANOOS activities, or via efforts like the UN Ocean Decade, where she co-leads a programme: Ocean Acidification Research for Sustainability, OARS.
Gerhard Kuska, Executive Director, MARACOOS
Dr. Gerhard Kuska is the Executive Director of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Association Coastal Ocean Observing System (MARACOOS, or Mid-Atlantic IOOS), a NOAA federally-certified regional association of academic, governmental, and private organizations from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras that power understanding and prediction of the Mid-Atlantic ocean, coasts, and estuaries.
He is also the Chair of the Board of the IOOS Association. Gerhard has served over the past 35 years in a variety of positions and organizations in the US, Europe, and the Middle East, including with NOAA, the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the United States Senate, the US Commission on Ocean Policy, and private industry with the sectors for international cargo transportation and for environmental services. He received his Ph.D. in Marine Policy from the University of Delaware.
Liza Wright-Fairbanks, Sea Grant Knauss Fellow, NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program
Dr. Liza Wright-Fairbanks is a John A. Knauss marine policy fellow at NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program (OAP). At OAP, Liza is the national coordinator for six regional stakeholder networks focused on building capacity for ocean acidification research, outreach, and education across the country. She also serves on the communications team at OAP, aiming to make federal research findings accessible to broad audiences.
Liza earned her Ph.D. in oceanography from Rutgers University where she used novel glider technology to investigate seasonality and implications of carbonate chemistry changes in the Mid-Atlantic Bight.