An intensive four-week, cross-disciplinary, graduate-level course in Optical Oceanography will be offered in June 2019 at the University of Maine’s Ira C. Darling Marine Center in Walpole, Maine, USA. This class is a continuation of the Optical Oceanography course first offered at the Friday Harbor Laboratories in 1985 and since 2001 at the Darling Marine Center. Past graduates are many of today’s leaders in oceanography. The course instructors are: Emmanuel Boss (coordinator), Ivona Cetinic, Curt Mobley, Collin Roesler, Ken Voss, and Jeremy Werdell. A grant for qualified participants will cover the University of Maine tuition, and room & board.

Apply by March 10, 2019, with notification by April 1, 2019. Online application is available at: https://dmc.umaine.edu/ocean-optics-2019-application-form/. For further details see the full announcement at: http://ioccg.org/ocean-optics-summer-class-june2019/ 

The Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) is now accepting proposals for new SCOR working groups. Proposals are due by 12:00 p.m. UCT on 15 April 2019. Decisions about which proposals will be funded will be made at the 2019 SCOR Annual Meeting in Toyama, Japan, on 23-25 September 2019. Each new group will be provided US$45,000 over a 3-4 year period to conduct its work. Please submit your proposals to the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Attached please find the 2019 Call for SCOR Working Groups.

We would like to let you know that applications are open for the next Nippon Foundation-POGO Centre of Excellence (NF-POGO CofE) at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) on the islands of Helgoland and Sylt. The course is open to 10 participants. Trainees must have at least a first degree in science. Preference will be given to applicants who currently hold a position in a research or academic institution in a developing country and anticipate returning to the country after completion of training at the NF-POGO Centre of Excellence at AWI. The 10-month training will promote excellence in integrated, multidisciplinary oceanography at a global scale by emphasizing core skills (e.g. writing, scientific presentations, statistics and experimental design) and specialised scientific topics such as modelling, remote sensing, ocean-atmosphere interactions.

Your application should be submitted by 1 March 2019. Applicants will be notified if they have been selected by end of May 2019. Scholarships will be provided from NF-POGO through the CofE that cover travel, room, board, tuition, and a modest allowance for those students accepted into the programme. For more information on course synopsis, eligibility and prospects, please see the website HERE.

We would like to inform you that the Tropical Pacific Observing System 2020 (TPOS 2020) Project released its Second Report draft for community review. TPOS 2020 released its First Report in 2016 and the Second Report builds on that document. It updates the evolving design of the Backbone observing system, drawing on new research and evidence including feedback received on the First Report, and responds to gaps identified by sponsors of the Project. If you would like to be a reviewer of the Second Report, please find it on the TPOS 2020 website (http://tpos2020.org/project-reports/second-report/), along with the Review Template. The marine biogeochemistry community might be particularly interested to review the contents of Chapter 4: Biogeochemical and Ecosystem Observations.

Please provide all comments by February 28, 2019. Note that this is the ONLY review period for the Second Report. Correspondence and questions should be addressed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) is now accepting applications for its next Executive Director, following the retirement of its current Executive Director in boreal fall 2019. The new SCOR Executive Director will be based in United States; the SCOR Secretariat is currently located at the University of Delaware. The position requires international travel. The starting annual salary will be competitive and will depend on qualifications, salary history, and experience of the successful applicant. Interviews will take place at the University of Delaware during the week of 10‐14 June 2019. For more information on duties and requirements, please see the announcement.

The application deadline is 1 April 2019.

The OceanObs’19 organizers are seeking community leaders for the thematic Breakout Sessions during the conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, on September 17-19, 2019. Nominations for session leaders should include a one-page proposal outlining the core focus of the chosen Breakout Session including an overview of the approach, expected outcomes, and benefits. Nominations and proposals must be submitted by no later than February 20, with limited exceptions for U.S. Federal employees. For more details and to submit a breakout session proposal please go to http://www.oceanobs19.net/breakout-sessions/.

We are happy to inform you that the Surface Ocean CO₂ Atlas (SOCAT; www.socat.info) has released an updated cookbook for data quality control procedures. The updated cookbook, which applies from version 7 onward, was prepared by a team led by Siv Lauvset (Bergen, Norway). There is no intention to retrospectively implement the revised quality control criteria for data sets in SOCAT versions 1-6. We also kindly remind you that the deadline for quality control of SOCAT version 7 is 31 March 2019.

You can download the updated cookbook from the SOCAT site HERE.

The Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) in Australia in collaboration with the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) has developed a series of Marine Data and Science e-lectures that are openly available for all interested users. The lectures are designed to help marine scientists/students learn how to use IMOS ocean observations data in their research. The topic-specific lectures include: ocean primary productivity, the carbon cycle, and ocean acidification, with associated hands-on exercises using real observations to gain experience on how to analyse and interpret the data. While the setting is in Australia, most of the concepts are generic enough to apply to other regions, so the lectures can be freely utilised by others as training material.

You can access the lectures through the Open2U system at: https://open2u.utas.edu.au/Course/4261

IOCCP and BONUS INTEGRAL are thrilled to open online applications (http://www.ioccp.org/2019-training-course) for an international training course "Instrumenting our ocean for better observation: a training course on a suite of biogeochemical sensors". The course will be held at the Sven Lovén Center for Marine Sciences in Kristineberg, Sweden, on June 10-19, 2019. The goal of the course is to further develop proficiency in the use of a suite of biogeochemical sensors and to improve the quality of the data currently generated by autonomous biogeochemical sensors. This intensive, 10-day training course will provide trainees with lectures, hands-on in-situ and laboratory experiences, and informal interactions to improve in-depth knowledge on instrument know-how, troubleshooting, data management, data reduction and quality control.

The course is open for 28 participants, PhD students and early-career researchers with large prospects for utilising the course experience to advance their ongoing or planned research projects and their scientific career in general. Detailed application instructions are available from the course page on the IOCCP website.

Application deadline: 1 February 2019.