Thursday, March 26, 2009

next week...Blogging from the Deep Sea Image Taxonomy Workshop at MBARI in Monterey, CA!

Next week, I will be attending and blogging from the Marine Image and Analysis Workshop being held at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in Moss Landing, CA (near Monterey, CA)!!!
(the forcipulate starish Rathbunaster californicus)

This workshop will be sponsored by MBARI


http://marakana.com/static/images/logos/clients/mbari_logo.gif

and the Census of Marine Life on Seamounts (CENSEAM)


The workshop's goal?

A gathering of all-star deep-sea biodiversity specialists, in fishes, sponges, corals & sea anemones, worms, crabs, cephalopods, and of course...ECHINODERMS (starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers & crinoids), will lead several sessions on how to identify and recognize deep-sea animals from images, such as this one:
(the crinoid Florometra and the starfish Rathbunaster)

The gathering aspires to share taxonomic knowledge between ELEVEN biodiversity/taxonomic specialists and over 70 participants !! (who hail from a variety of fields) so that an increasing number of persons can recognize the huge amount of life which exists in the deep!


This is something that has become especially important given the huge increase and importance of video and other imagery which has become available from submersibles and other deep-sea imaging.

Looking forward to sharing what I learn and experience from California next week!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, Chris!! What's up?? I still follow your updates even though I don't post comments very often. I really like these deep-sea imaging works. By the way, we will restart a project on deep-sea coral fauna from Campos Basin next month with the R&D Center of the energy company PETROBRAS. I am really anxious to watch the films again and try to identify the organisms. Then I will wait for your post on the workshop to learn a more about it. My best wishes!! Rafa.

ChrisM said...

Feel free to email me pix of any starfish you see...click on the links to see the people involved...