Thursday, November 4, 2010

Heppell Lab at PICES


During the week of October 25th through the 29th a few members of the Heppell lab current and past attended the annual meeting for the North Pacific Marine Science Orginization (PICES), in Portland, Oregon. This meeting was an opportunity for students in the lab to interact with scientists working in the north Pacific from the US, Canada, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and China. Oregon State University was well represented with multiple scientists from Hatfield Marine Science Center as well as students from Fisheries and Wildlife, COAS and zoology.

The meetings theme this year was"North Pacific Ecosystems Today, and Challenges in Understanding and Forcasting Change". Much of the meeting's sessions were on the influences of changing climate on species distributions, trophic interactions as well as large scale oceanographic considerations. Current students, Kevin Thompson and Luke Whitman had research relevant to this theme in the north Pacific and were lucky enough to attend for free and receive lodging from PICES in exchange for volunteer time at the registration desk. Luke presented one chapter of his thesis with a talk entitled "Variation in the distribution and energy density of juvenile walleye Pollock in the southeastern Bering Sea". Kevin's poster, "Factors affecting the diets of groundfish in the Gulf of Alaska" presented some preliminary results of his dissertation work. Both presentations were well recieved and both students had an opportunity to discuss their research with multiple scientists representing a variety of agencies. Current student Linsey Arnold and former students Ali Dauble (now with ODFW) and Marisa Litz (now with NMFS Northwest Science Center) took the opportunity to attend portions of this meeting.Overall, it was a great opportunity having this large, international meeting so close in Portland and multiple members of lab took that time to make important contacts as well as increase exposure to the lab's research.

For more information on PICES, this last meeting as well as future meetings go to www.pices.int



















Luke Whitman presenting and Kevin Thompson with poster at PICES 2010


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