Backyard Buoys – a project enabling Indigenous and coastal communities to gather and use wave data enhancing their blue economy and hazard protection – will be a keynote topic at the 2025 Alaska Marine Science Symposium (AMSS) in Anchorage from Jan. 27-31.
The program brings together three regional ocean observing networks of the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (AOOS) with underserved Indigenous communities by way of a sensor company with a low-cost wave buoy that measures significant wave height, period, sea surface temperature, and barometric pressure.
Partners in Alaska, Pacific Northwest and the Pacific Islands work collectively to democratize local wave measurements and provide a solution to challenges presented by observing technologies that are too expensive and cumbersome to purchase and sustain.
While each area is unique, their shared similarities have united them in a team effort.
AOOS, the Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System (PacIOOS), and the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems (NANOOS) have for 20 years been building trust with communities in their regions to serve coastal ocean data, forecasts, and information products that meet their needs.
Speakers will include Sheyna Wisdom of AOOS and John Hopson Jr. and Jenny Evans of the Alaska Eskimo Walrus Commission.
Keynote speakers also include National Geographic photographer Anand Varma, whose work has included a focus on the secret lives of parasites, and Noelle Bowlin of the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center. Bowlin is the program lead at the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations program at NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center.
The annual event showcases the latest marine research about the Arctic, Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands and Gulf of Alaska marine ecosystems. As Alaska’s premier marine research conference, AMSS has for years brought together scientists, educators, resource managers, students and interested members of the public to learn about the latest marine research being conducted in Alaskan waters.
AMSS is organized by the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB), in Anchorage, a marine research organization that supports fisheries management and marine ecosystem needs, as well as projects that enhance the ability to understand ecosystem variability and the effect of this variability on subsistence and/or commercial marine resources. In 2014, for example, NPRB funded three long-term monitoring projects that will collect data over a five-year period.
Registration for AMSS 2025 is open online at https://www.alaskamarinescience.org. Early bird registration fees are available through Dec. 20.
This post was originally published on here
