Dr. Vladimir Kulik (centre) accepting the POMA from Dr. Laura Richards (PICES Chairman) and Dr. Thomas Therriault (PICES Science Board Chairman)

POMA Macrofauna Inventory Presentation

At the 2015 PICES Annual Meeting in Qingdao, China, it was announced that TINRO-Centre of Russia for their Macrofauna Inventory was the recipient of the 8th POMA Award.

The presentation ceremony took place on October 19, 2015, during the PICES-2015 Opening Session. It was conducted by Drs. Laura Richards (PICES Chairman) and Thomas Therriault (PICES Science Board Chairman). A commemorative plaque and a certificate were presented to Dr. Vladimir Kulik of the Pacific Scientific Research Fisheries Center (TINRO-Centre), Russia, who received the award on behalf of the TINRO-Centre Macrofauna Inventory Publication Series.

The PICES Ocean Monitoring Service Award (POMA) recognizes organizations, groups and outstanding individuals that have contributed significantly to the advancement of marine science in the North Pacific through long-term ocean monitoring and data management. The award also strives to enlighten the public on the importance of those activities as fundamental to marine science. It draws attention to an important aspect of the PICES Convention that is less appreciated: “to promote the collection and exchange of information and data related to marine scientific research in the area concerned”.

Please join me in congratulating the recipient of the 2015 POMA Award, which is the TINRO-Centre of Russia for their Macrofauna Inventory.

To “increase understanding of climatic and anthropogenic impacts and consequences on marine ecosystems” (a FUTURE Objective) it is imperative to have observations (data) about the abundance and distribution of species. The TINRO-Centre Macrofauna Inventory is an outstanding example of this. The inventory is a twelve volume compilation of very detailed observations of the abundance and distribution of species (nekton, pelagic macrofauna and benthic macrofauna) in the Northwest Pacific Ocean. This is an immense contribution: 7,186 pages in 12 volumes; 33 years of data (1997 to 2010); 177 research cruises with 25,835 pelagic trawls; 220 research cruises with 30,510 benthic trawls; summarized by species (825 in pelagic trawls; 1306 in the benthic trawls), by seasons (4) and by biostatistical areas (48); summarized by depth range; further summarized by size/age groups for some well-studies species; and even further stratified by 4 separate regimes: before 1990, when the pelagic ecosystem was dominated by sardines and pollock; 1991–1995, a transition period with sharp declines in abundance; 1996–2005, a period of low abundance; 2005–2010, a period characterized by high abundance of Pacific salmon.

This is an impressive array of stations and samples, with some large databases in the background to archive, summarize and analyze these data. This series of publications is a unique contribution and is of special value for future comparisons and ecosystem monitoring in the Northwest Pacific, given ongoing global climate change and the expansion of industrial development in this region.

Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in congratulating TINRO, who is represented here by Dr. Vladimir Kulik, as the recipient of the 2015 PICES Ocean Monitoring Service Award.

It is a very great honor for me and many other coauthors who made this award possible. The main authors are Dr. Igor Volvenko and Dr. Vyacheslav Shuntov who made tremendous efforts to put together so many stations and filter out valuable information from trawl charts and figure out with the aim to produce a series of reference Tables on the distribution and abundance of nekton and macrofauna of the Russian Far Eastern Seas and Northwest Pacific Ocean in accessible format. Definitely, these cruises could not be promoted and published without efforts of the technical staff of TINRO-Centre including crew members and field researchers.

I would like to say special thanks to the director of TINRO-Centre Dr. Lev Bocharov for making this huge work for making this publicly available. Thank you.