December 2008 – Jesse Ausubel
December 2008 – Jesse Ausubel, Sloan Foundation Program Manager for the Census Of Marine Life.
Heather Mannix: Would you tell me a bit about the creation and development of the Census?
Jesse Ausubel: Fred Grassle visited my office at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) early in the afternoon of July 2nd 1996 carrying a copy of the 1995 US National Research Council report on Understanding Marine Biodiversity which Fred helped write. Fred and I then knew one another only slightly. Fred visited at the suggestion of Andy Solow or John Steele. Since 1990 I have worked during July and August at WHOI, so on the 2nd of July I was pondering what to do for the summer. I had attended many biology and fisheries seminars at WHOI in which one of the messages was “the model is better than the data.” Fred said something needed to be done to lift attention to life in the oceans at the species level, both because of the potential for scientific discovery and because of the increasing threats to marine biodiversity. Fred was completing at that time the only marine chapter of the 1997 Global Biodiversity Assessment. I had worked a lot on climate change and the carbon cycle, so I appreciated that all of ocean life was routinely stuffed into three to five ocean boxes measured in gigatons. I had also participated in the creation of major cooperative international scientific endeavors such as the World Climate Program and Global Change (IGBP) Program. At the end of our conversation, Fred and I agreed that we should explore encouraging an ambitious observational program for marine life. I started calling it the Census of the Fishes, which I thought had a good biblical ring to it.
During the next two-three weeks I spoke with experienced people such as John Steele, William Nierenberg, Robert M. White, Van Holliday, and Michael Sissenwine, as well as experts outside the U.S., almost all of whom said “good idea, but it has to be on a large scale to make a difference.” At the end of July I met for an hour with the President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, mathematician and former naval officer Ralph Gomory, who immediately liked the idea and authorized feasibility studies of it.
Ralph and I agreed the feasibility studies needed to address three questions: Could it be done? That is, did technology exist to do very large scale surveys? Should it be done? That is, would the benefits repay amply the effort and investment? And, would it be done? That is, would the stakeholders allow it to proceed or, better, enthusiastically cooperate to make it happen?
After three years of feasibility studies, including about a dozen workshops and conferences, we had affirmative answers to all three questions. A set of grants in May 2000 by Sloan, ONR, NSF, and NOAA under the auspices of the US National Ocean Partnership Program (NOPP) to create the data assimilation framework (Ocean Biogeographic Information System) for the Census of Marine Life marked the real start of activity. Meanwhile, an international scientific steering committee had been established at CORE with Fred as chair.
HM: How does the current Census program compare with your vision in 2000/2001?
JA: The vision from the outset was a decadal program to conclude in 2010 with the first Census of Marine Life addressing three question: What did live in the oceans before fishing became important? What does live in the oceans? What will live in the oceans? From the outset, we sought a balanced interest in diversity, distribution, and abundance and attention to the limits to knowledge, that is, the program should describe what is known, what is unknown, and what may be unknowable or very hard to learn. The mission of the program has been very stable.
Fred from the outset felt we should get in the water quickly and lead by example rather than use lots of time and effort writing plans. He also felt the program should be a coalition of the willing. We should not insist on addressing every ocean realm or taxonomic group but rather build the program with research communities eager to work at a synoptic or global scale. Fred was wise on both counts. A happy surprise is that CoML has attained remarkably comprehensive coverage with the bottom-up strategy. Communities joined. Great examples are the International Census of Marine Microbes and the Census of Reefs and of Zooplankton. CoML provided a framework for these communities to meet ambitious objectives that were latent in the communities.
HM: In your opinion, what’s the most exciting discovery to come from a Census project so far?
JA: Among the most exciting discoveries are the existence of the rare microbial biosphere by the Microbes project led by Mitch Sogin and Jan de Leeuw and the huge shoals of fish, billions of herring, in the Gulf of Maine, by the ocean acoustic remote sensing developed by Nick Makris and colleagues. I am also very fond of some of our newly discovered and described species, such as the now famous Yeti crab, carnivorous sponges, and Sloan squid.
HM: What has been the most enjoyable part of working with the Census over the last 7 years?
JA: Many aspects of the program are a joy. The ocean itself is the greatest joy. Even the fieldwork in which I have been able to participate has astonished me, for example, a December week in the dark above the Arctic Circle in the Norwegian Sea on the Johan Hjort counting herring on a cruise with Ken Foote and a July week in the continuous light in the Canada Basin north of Alaska on the US icebreaker Healy on a cruise led by Bodil Bluhm, Rolf Gradinger, and Russ Hopcroft. The project is blessed with wonderful people in all the field programs and on the Steering Committee and Secretariat.
HM: How do you see the U.S. Census contributing to the international program and its legacies?
JA: The U.S. scientific community continues to have a special talent for conceiving and rapidly implementing new ideas. As mentioned, the U.S., through NOPP, launched the Ocean Biogeographical Information System. The U.S. National Committee generated the microbial and plankton field projects at its Salem, Massachusetts, workshop in 2003. The University of Rhode Island Office of Ocean Programs, led by Sara Hickox, has generated many wonderfully creative and effective outreach programs of the Census. In the present implementation phase nearly every U.S. marine research center from Fairbanks to Florida is helping carry out the Census. With regard to legacies, OBIS will flourish only if the U.S. government and research community sustain commitments to it. Similarly, the integration of CoML-developed technologies in the Global Ocean Observing System, for example, in tagging and telemetry, will depend in large part on big commitments in biology by the U.S. components of the ocean observing system.
HM: In what ways can or should the oceanographic community (and/or U.S. federal entities) become more involved with CoML?
JA: CoML offers prototypes for the biological aspects of the ocean observing system and its data assimilation framework. The community and the agencies should both use CoML to push the frontier and take from it technologies and practices that are ready to serve as part of routine continuous or periodic monitoring systems.
I cannot stress enough the value of shared, open-access databases. OBIS and its cousins, the barcode of life database (http://www.boldsystems.org/views/login.php) and the marine species pages of the emerging Encyclopedia of Life (http://www.eol.org/) can multiply our effectiveness and opportunities in both research and education if the community fully absorbs the habit of contributing data to them and providing quality control. These databases are what we observe through our macroscopes. The Federal agencies should require data deposition in OBIS and its linked cousins.
Finally, the findings and discoveries of the Census should improve management of ocean resources. Groups concerned, for example, with management of seamounts, margins, reefs, polar oceans, and top predators should begin gleaning ideas for their policies and practices.
HM: What you would you like to see happen in the Census community after 2010?
JA: At the recent All Program meeting of the Census in New Zealand, Song Sun, a member of the Scientific Steering Committee from China, said the Census is a snap shot, and our challenge will be to move from a photo to a movie. I hope the Census community is so effective in sharing its exciting discoveries and important insights that resources are readily available for magnificent marine movies in the next decade.
