* World Conference on Marine Biodiversity 2011 
* Japan Joint Statistical Meeting 
* Hub annual science workshop 

World Conference on Marine Biodiversity 2011 
The next World Conference on Marine Biodiversity will be held in Aberdeen, Scotland, on 26 to 30 September 2011.

The conference will provide an expert platform for discussion, dissemination, policy analysis and development of the key issues surrounding marine biodiversity and is being jointly organised by the Universities of Aberdeen and St Andrews.  Alongside the academic conference, they will be hosting an exhibition of marine suppliers, technologies, stakeholders and agencies and there will be an active public outreach programme.

The aims of the conference are to:

• Review our knowledge of marine biodiversity and its role in marine ecosystem functioning 
• Assess the most critical threats to marine systems and consider management strategies 
• Discuss sustainable development and socio-economic impacts on the marine sector 
• Identify future research priorities

Visit the conference website for further information and to sign up for their news alert service http://www.marine-biodiversity.org/  Also read hub researchers’ reports from the 2008 conference.

Japan Joint Statistical Meeting 
6 to 9 September 2009, Kyoto 
Report by Hideyasu Shimadzu, Geoscience Australia - CERF Prediction and Surrogates Program

Hub researcher Hideyasu Shimadzu attended and gave a presentation to the Japan Joint Statistical Meeting which was held at Doshisha University in Kyoto in September. The conference represented the largest gathering of statisticians working in the fields of marine science and environmetrics in the Asia-Pacific region.

Hideyasu reported on research being undertaken with Dr Ross Darnell (CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics) for the hub’s Prediction Program. The title of his talk ``Modelling species abundances in the Australian ocean” presented recent progress made in dealing with the impacts on species presence/absence data produced by different sampling processes adopted on marine surveys.

This workshop proved invaluable in that it provided rapid external review of the team’s research approach and initial results, and it provided feedback on the research direction being undertaken in the Prediction Project.  Importantly, the conference provided Hideyasu with a forum to discuss survey sampling issues with other researchers working with quite similar data sets.

Hub annual science workshop

The CERF Marine Biodiversity Hub’s third annual science workshop was held from 25 to 30 October in Townsville commencing with a special session for postdoctoral researchers and PhD students.  This was then followed by 3½ days of intensive workshop sessions involving 48 hub scientists.  Twenty took the opportunity to tour the Australian Institute of Marine Science facilities (pictured). 

The overall aim of the workshop was to plan the synthesis of data and ongoing work to meet milestones and deliverables, as outlined in the hub’s project overview - CERF_Project_Overview.pdf

It was refreshing to see the level of collaboration between the different programs, with joint planning sessions requested to profit from the full expertise available to the hub. Several papers are already in press, with many more planned for publication in the next 12 months. An important focus of our work over the next 6 months will be preparing accessible reports of our research results so that they can reach the broadest possible audience. A presentation from our knowledge broker provided some insights into how researchers might achieve this.