The Conference on the Transport and Linkages of the Intra-Americas Sea was held 1 to 5 November1997 in Cozumel, Mexico under the joint sponsorship of the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) andthe Sub-commission for the Caribbean and Adjacent Regions of the Intergovernmental OceanographicCommission (IOC) of UNESCO (IOCARIBE). A total of 52 scientists and engineers mainly from the USAand Mexico, participated. The disciplines of Physical Oceanography, Meteorology, BiologicalOceanography, Chemical Oceanography, Marine Geology, Fisheries Oceanography, and Fisheries Sciencewere represented. In addition to a MMS representative, there were representatives from PEMEX, theMexican oil company.There were a total of 37 oral and 8 poster presentations made on a broad variety of topics. Thesepresentations led to much discussion of the IAS as a regional system from physical, chemical, and ecologicalperspectives, with the throughflow of the Gulf Stream System serving as a mechanism to link the physics,chemistry, and ecology of the IAS subdomains. There was a strong consensus that we do not presently havea quantitative understanding of how the IAS functions as a system. However, it was thought possible to gainsuch an understanding with a coordinated programme of strategically placed long-term observationscombined with numerical models in the spirit and fashion of a regional component of the Global OceanObserving System) GOOS.Accordingly, a number of findings and recommendations emerged that provide some of the basis fordetermining the scientific research community’s stakeholding interests, both as contributors to the observingsystems and as users of the data and information products, in a potential IAS-GOOS05/05/2009. |
