C a l C O F I   C O N F E R E N C E   2 0 0 8

Featuring a Symposium on
"The California Current in the 21st Century: Troublesome Trends or Meandering Variability?"

Sumner Auditorium, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
University of California, San Diego

First Announcement and Call for Papers

The 2008 CalCOFI Conference will be in Sumner Auditorium, at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, 17-19 November. ( Map )

The Coordinator must receive the $200 registration fee by 17 October.

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

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 30 September to the attention of the Conference Coordinator (John Heine).

"The California Current in the 21st Centry: Troublesome trends or meandering Variability?"

As we enter the 21st century, the ocean faces a suite of challenges. Anthropogenic influences via warming, altered circulation, trophic cascades from fishing, runoff and eutrophication, and acidification can affect the ocean on multiple levels. In particular, several years since 2002 saw numerus unusual events in the California Current: hypoxia and highly variable upwelling on the Oregon shelf, the continuous presence of jumbo squid, further collapse of California Current salmon stocks, and increasing numbers of dinoflagellates and red tides, amongst other events. But change is typical of the California Current. The CalCOFI program first documented how atmospheric perturbations associated with El Niño resulted in modified ocean circulation and productivity in the California Current in 1957/1958. By the end of the 20th century, it was apparent that decadal variability, typified by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), also played a critical role in driving both ocean circulation and marine populations. Still, it remains a critical challenge for oceanographers to distinguish potential anthropogenic effects from natural variability.

The aim of the symposium is to compare changes in the 21st century with historical records from the sediments or oceanographic time series (such as CalCOFI and other ocean observation programs) to address the questions: How unusual is this first decade of the 21st centruy? Can we determine the influence of warming and other anthropogenic impacts in the California Current? Is there pattern underlying recent changes, and what are their primary causes?

The CalCOFI Symposium will be convened by: Dr. David Field, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

• 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 31 August, 2008. These abstracts will be reviewed by a selection committee and authors will be notified of the acceptance of their submission by 14 September.
• Proposed contributions related to the California Current symposium should be discussed with the symposium organizer, Dr. David Field (dfield@mbari.org).
• 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 31 August.

In November, the weather can be cool, so appropriate dress should be considered. Dress for conference sessions is casual. For your convenience we have obtained special Conference rates from the Best Western Inn by the Sea, Hotel La Jolla at the Shores, and the La Jolla Shores Hotel. You may call the hotels no later than October 17, 2008 (Hotel La Jolla) or October 2, 2008 (La Jolla Shores Hotel) and ask for the CalCOFI Conference rate or you may want to seek other accomodations.

Hotel La Jolla at the Shores

Lodging at Best Western Inn by the Sea

La Jolla Shores Hotel

Conference related communications should be addressed to:

California Current Symposium questions should be directed to: