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The 2009 CalCOFI Conference will be held at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California, December 7-9.
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Registration

The Coordinator must receive the $200 registration fee by 20 November.

Please be aware ALL attendees need to register for the conference, including symposium speakers.

There are four payment options on the registration form: Check or Money Order (US dollars, made payable to "CalCOFI"), Agency Purchase Order, UCSD Index number, or through PayPal, either by using a credit card or a PayPal account. These are explained in more detail below to help you with your registration. We cannot accept foreign currency or checks from foreign banks.

PAYMENT OPTION INFORMATION

PayPal: Since we cannot accept foreign currency or checks from foreign banks, PayPal is an option that enables our foreign participants to prepay their registration fee. Participants may use a credit card (Visa, MasterCard, AMEX or Discover) or a PayPal account. After submitting your registration form you will be directed to PayPal for this transaction.

Agency Purchase Order: For individual participants please specify agency. For those submitting the purchase order, you can either fax or email.

UCSD Index Number: Specify the index number on the registration form.

Check or Money Order payable in US dollars from a US bank to "CalCOFI": Upon completion of your registration form you will be given the mailing address to mail your check or money order.

Graduate Student: Registration fee reduced to $100.

NOTE: The payment buttons below are only if you have already completed the registration form selecting PayPal as your payment option, but have not yet completed the PayPal payment. Otherwise, please visit the registration form above, which will provide information on payment options and directions.

Standard	Graduate Student

Financial Assistance

Limited financial assistance will be available to graduate students. Requests for financial aid will be considered in the order that they are received and requests should be made no later than 9 October to the attention of the Conference Coordinator (John Heine).

The Symposium of the Conference

"Forecasting Fishery Productivity in the California Current"

The CalCOFI program, with its long time series of biological and physical oceanography data, has shown that ocean conditions can be a major driver of fishery productivity. The remarkable 55-years dataset encompasses a wide range of ocean conditions and illustrates how they are related to larval abundances. In this year’s symposium, we will explore how measures of ocean productivity can be used to predict the strength of future year classes of fished species. We will examine forecasts generated by direct observations of larval abundances to extrapolate the number of fishery recruits, and compare these to forecasts generated by population dynamic models. We will explore the potential for indices of ocean productivity to define 'good' and 'bad' years for fisheries, and consider how 'good' conditions differ among species. We will examine the capabilities of quantitative forecasting methods which incorporate nonlinear stochasticity in fishery recruitment rather than simple deterministic variability underpinning traditional population models. Finally, we will explore the implications of uncertainty in both biological productivity and physical ocean conditions for fishery management decisions.

Call for Papers

• Verbal Transactions - A limited number of 15 minute contributed verbal transactions (~16) will be accepted, related to the symposium topic or the biology, physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology, politics or economics of the California Current ecosystem, its adjacent waters, and Eastern Boundary Currents. Abstracts of papers for verbal transactions must be received by the Conference Coordinator (John Heine: calcofi_coordinator@coast.ucsd.edu) by 25 September. These abstracts will be reviewed by a selection committee and authors will be notified of the acceptance of their submission by 25 September.
• Poster Transactions - It is not anticipated that poster transactions will be limited in number. In order for poster titles to be included in the second announcement, they should be received by the Coordinator by 25 September.

Summary of Important Dates

25 September	Titles and Draft Abstracts of proposed verbal transactions due
25 September	Poster titles due
2 October	Notifications to authors
5 October	Room reservation deadline for Asilomar. All rooms must be reserved with the CalCOFI Coordinator by this date. Rooms may only be available after this date if space permits.
9 October	Deadline for financial aid requests
16 October	Final Abstract due for both transactions & posters (in English, in electronic format)
20 November	Registration fees due
6 December	1500 - check-in at Asilomar Conference Center
7 December	0900-1200 - registration 1300 - Opening of the Conference - Status of the California Current and its Fisheries
8 December	0900 - Symposium and contributed papers 1900-2030 - Evening poster session
9 December	0900 - Verbal Contributions 1200 Conclusion of CalCOFI Conference

Dress, Climate, and Facilities

In December, the weather can be cool, so appropriate dress should be considered. Dress for conference sessions is casual. We strongly suggest that participants stay onsite at Asilomar. See the Asilomar webpage ( www.visitAsilomar.com ) for room descriptions. The daily room rates per person include 3 meals a day and are as follows:

• Historic: Single $156.46, Double $105.86, Triple / Quad $81.66
• Standard: Single $198.26, Double $121.26, Triple / Quad $91.56

Communications

Conference related communications should be addressed to: