SCARMARBIN Workshop 2006
AWI-Bremerhaven, 9-10 June

The workshop gathered 18 scientists from 9 countries in Bremerhaven, Germany, and made substantial progress towards reaching SCAR-MarBIN objectives, and recentering the project's implementation strategy. Our local host was Dr Julian Gutt (Alfred Wegener Institute) who made perfect arrangements for the meeting.
Highlights include:

Progress: a progress report was presented to the participants, online, showing progress made since the last workshop in the development of the SCAR-MarBIN portal. Participants were extremely positive, and gave many ideas to improve the portal's capabilities.
Belgian Biodiversity platform: SCAR-MarBIN is now implemented within the Belgian biodiversity platform, and benefits from a secure federal funding until 2009, with an intermediary evaluation. A possible strategy for long-term funding (after 2009) was presented.
ISC: the group agreed on the final composition of the SCAR-MarBIN international steering committee, representing operators, funding partners, data providers and users (http://www.scarmarbin.be/Steering.php).
Data Policy: the group agreed on changes to include in the SCAR-MarBIN data policy, terms of use and citation
Network implementation: the major lines conducting the portal and network imlplementation strategy were presented and the molecular data handling (EMB-net) was discussed. It was recommmended to interact more closely with JCADM on the management of metadata.
Future contributions: participants gave an enthusiastic overview of the potential contribution to SCAR-MarBIN for the near future. These contributions will come from the AAD, BAS, BIANZO, MNA, ICOTA, PELAGANT, CAML, MARFA and ABBED. All of these will add a lot to the value of SCAR-MarBIN in the coming months/years.
Gazetteer: the group decided on a strategy to implement progressively the antarctic maritime integrated gazetteer. It will be established from a variety of sources, and will remain user-oriented. Other SCAR groups concerned with similar issues will be approached.
OBIS: SCAR-MarBIN was officially recognized by the OBIS International Committee as the Regional OBIS Node (RON) for the Antarctic. Roles and responsibilities for SCAR-MarBIN were examined by the group. It was recognized that SCAR-MarBIN is de facto already acting as a RON. Direct action points were decided in this framework.
GIS: the group assessed the various vizualisation tools available on the portal, and possible items and standards to explore. The possibility to link to existing maps database was also discussed.
Modelization: the group examined in details the data and technical needs for developing online ecological modelization tools. The recommendation will be to use SCAR-MarBIN databases related to environmental databases to model presence and then use non-null abundances from specific surveys in a second approach.
RAMS: progress on the initial development of the Register of Antarctic Marine Species was reported. A presentation was given on the organisational structure and the functionality of the European Register of Marine Species (ERMS), as a possible model for the Register of Antarctic Marine Species (RAMS). The group addressed the possibility to include data on microbes.

The meeting ended with some updates on stepstones regarding SCARXXIX, IPY and the next workshop . The next SCAR-MARBIN Workshop will be held 8-10 June 2007 in Bialowieza, Poland, together with an overlap with the CAML SSC. Jacek Sicinski and colleagues from Lodz will be our local hosts.

With best regards,
Bruno and Claude