Stickers for Micro B3 and OSD - NOW AVAILABLE

Dear Micro B3 and OSD Partners and Friends, 

We are happy to announce that stickers for Micro B3 and OSD are now available! Within the next couple of days the stickers will be sent to the WP leaders and other Micro B3/OSD partners to distribute them among the community. 

So with a little help of YOU we hope that they will help us advertising the Micro B3 project and Ocean Sampling Day WORLDWIDE.

Stickers are FOR FREE

Therefore do not hesitate to contact one of the local Micro B3 and/or one of the OSD partners. You can also send us an email (contact@microb3.eu). We try to ship them to you as fast as possible. 

Picture of one of our first happy supporter! Thank you very much. 

The Micro B3 Team 

Ocean Sampling Day – Rothera

Rothera is a British Antarctic Survey research station, located on Adelaide Island on the Antarctic Peninsula at 67° South (http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/living_and_working/research_stations/rothera). The plan was to sample on the Summer Solstice (21st of December) however our first resupply ship since March (the RRS James Clark Ross) arrived on that very day, suspending boating activities whilst the whole base was involved in unloading a year’s worth of cargo (including Sterivex filters!). We were able to sample on the 27th of December.

The Rothera Oceanographic and Biological Time Series (RaTS) has been running since 1997 and continues year round – collecting data through weekly water sampling and CTD events. We sampled for the Winter Solstice OSD earlier in the year (albeit 6 weeks late due to sea ice conditions!).

For this sampling event we were able to get to the primary RaTS sampling site (67°34.400’S 68°13.500’W). The weather was calm but overcast, and on the way to the site we were fortunate enough to have a pod of ~12 orca join us! They were very interested in the boat and were clearly seen ‘spyhopping’ icebergs in their search for seals. The air temperature was 3°c (18°c warmer than our winter sampling event) and the water temperature at 15m (the RaTS sampling depth) was -0.46°c (over a degree warmer than the winter sampling event). 

We first deployed the CTD to 500m (winching by hand!) and then collected water from 15m. In contrast to the last OSD sampling event there is an abundance of life in the water here as it is the Antarctic summer, so I collected 4 x 1l samples. It was not feasible to filter on site so the samples were transported back to the laboratory to be filtered and frozen at -80°c. I filtered 2 x 1l with the newly arrived Sterivex filters and 2 x 1l with the GFF filters I used for the last OSD event.

The routine sampling for the RaTS program also means we have data for chlorophyll and ammonium concentration, as well as samples preserved for HPLC, CO2, salts, isotopes and nutrient analysis. This along with the CTD cast (temperature, salinity, PAR and fluorescence) creates an excellent data set.

Mairi Fenton

Rothera Marine Assistant

OSD Co-ordinators

There are now many OSD Co-ordinators. We expect to have more of them in the future.

MicroB3:

Frank-Oliver Glöckner, MPI Bremen, MicroB3 Co-ordinator

Linda-Amaral Zettler, Woods Hole, MicroB3 Scientific Advisory Role (ICOMM MIRADA LTER)

MicroB3 OSD Core Team:

Dawn Field, Oxford University, OSD, WP2 Leader

Mesude Bicak, Oxford University, OSD Co-ordinator/Bioinformatician

Anna Klindworth, MPI Bremen, OSD Co-ordinator

MicroB3 Co-ordinators linking with the rest of the MicroB3 Consortium:
(For a full list of the MicroB3 WP & leads, please see http://www.microb3.eu/work-packages)

Petra ten Hoopen, EBI, Metadata & Standards (WP2 & WP4)

Michelle Barbier, CIESM, Med Co-ordinator (WP2 & WP9)

Stephane Pesant, AWI, PANGAEA & Environmental data (WP2 & WP3)

Renzo Kottman, MPI Bremen, Bioinformatics (WP2 & WP5 Leader)

Simon Claus, VLIZ, Expert site (WP2)

Georgious Kotoulas, HCMR, Expert site and ecological analysis (WP2 & WP6)

Arianna Broggiato, BIOGOV, ABS (WP8)

Arul Scaria, BIOGOV, Data Policy (WP8) 

Alban Ramette, AWI, Biostatistics (WP5 & WP6)

Antonio Fernandez Guerra, MPI Bremen, Biotechnology (Bioinformatic Analysis) (WP7)

OSD Partners (EMP, GOs, GGI):

Neil Davies, UC Berkeley, GOs Network, WAML, Pacific Region

Jack Gilbert, Argonne National Labs, EMP

Sarah Owens, Argonne National Labs, EMP Sequencing Lead

Jarrad Marcell, Argonne National Labs, EMP Technical Lead

Katie Barker, Smithsonian Institution, GGI Bio-Archiving

Additional OSD Coordinators:

Chris Meyers, Smithsonian Institute, ARMS

Nathalie Valette-Silver, NOAA

Jo-Ann Leong, NAML

Naiara Rodriguez-Ezpeleta, AZTI Technalia, DEVOTES

Michael Thorndyke, University of Gothenburg, WAMS

Dennis Fink, Mediomix, Crowdfunding & OSD Film 

Wolfgang Hankeln, Mediomix, Crowdfunding & OSD Film 

Julia Schnetzer, OSD Outreach and Crowdfunding Team

OSD Site Coordinators:

Linda Amaral-Zettler, Nauset Marsh

Adriana Zingone, Naples

Georgios Kotoulas, Crete

Patricia Wecker, Moorea

Melody Clark, Rothera

LeeAnn Fishback, Churchill

Daniel Read, Thames

Ian Salter, Banyuls

Simon Claus, VLIZ

Mesude Bicak, North Cyprus

Viggó Þór Marteinsson, Iceland

Sandi Orlic, Croatia

Josep M Gasol, Blanes

Matthew Church, HOT

Jed Fuhrman, SPOTS

Stephen Giovannoni, BATS

Christian Jeanthon, Roscoff

Antje Wichels, Helgoland

Gaby Gorsky, Villefranche

Katarina Abrahamsson, Kristineberg

Luke Thompson and Christian Voolstra, Red Sea

Declan Schroeder, L4

OSD Telecons - started on Jan 8th, 2013

As part of ramping up coordination of OSD we are having four telecons a week (see outline below). Until further notice all telecons are on Skype. If you'd like to join, please send an email to osd-contact<at>microb3<dot>eu and give your Skype handle.

1. Tuesday at 4pm (UK Time) - OSD Community Telecons I
All welcome, any questions and queries with OSD will be addressed by the OSD Core Team.

2. Tuesday at  11am (UK Time) - OSD Community Telecons II
All welcome, any questions and queries with OSD will be addressed by the OSD Core Team.

3. On Request: Wednesday at 8 pm or sometimes at 10pm (UK Time) - OSD Community Telecons III
This time slot is available on request specifically for OSD participants in and around the Pacific time zones. For example, UTC + 12 hours.

4. Wednesday at 4pm (UK Time) - OSD Coordinators Telecons
All welcome, but will specifically be a chance for all OSD Coordinators to update on activities.

You can view the agenda for all calls here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Zvr4-mTWE2aPyVcyg3UdzTcVyyLZDfQ9G41inwI8saA/edit#heading=h.vswt7x483a9z

Micro B3 goes live on social networks....Facebook

Anna Klindworth has launched a Facebook site for Micro B3 especially designed to involve the "younger" scientific community. She will especially use it to help with the preparation and outreach of Ocean Sampling Day event.

The Micro B3 (OSD) page can be found at http://www.facebook.com/microb3osd.

Call for Participation in Ocean Sampling Day

A Call to Join Ocean Sampling Day

You can use the simple form below to register an expression of interest in joining OSD 2014 (or prior pilot activities). Please fill in form and we will contact you.

Register your Expression of Interest in Joining OSD:   http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Z6SX289

=======================================================================

Expression of Interest in joining Ocean Sampling Day

Please briefly description your interest in Ocean Sampling Day. All the fields are optional. After you make your expression of interest in participating you will be contacted by the OSD Consortium. Eventually, if you chose to join OSD, you will need to formally register to participate.

1. Contact Name
2. Contact Email
3. Contact Address (Institution)
4. Your ideas - how would you like to participate in OSD?
5. How would your contributed samples be contextualized/unique?
6. When would you want to participate
7. Do you have funding to participate? 

 OSD will become what the community makes it....

GSC 14 Oxford, September 17-19, 2012 Session on Genomic Observatories - 1st action: Ocean Sampling Day

Ocean Sampling Day (OSD) is a first example of the way that research projects (Micro B3) could leverage a network of Genomic Observatories. What are the anticipated benefits and challenges faced by sites (represented on the panel) preparing for the coordinated day of marine genomic sampling on June 21, 2014? 

The following topics were discussed:

• What is a Genomic Observatory and what might a GOs Network look like in the future?
• Should GOs be selected according to objective criteria?
• How would a GOs research coordination network help sites and advance science?
• Could a network create emergent properties, ultimately a global GO?
• Could it contribute to a Global Biocode? (inventories of species and genetic variation across GOs Network)
• Could it organize a regular Earth Sampling Day (ESD) across aquatic and terrestrial sites?
• How do we engage further participants? 

Participants presenting their experiences with the Pilot OSD on June 20, 2012. In total 21 stations all over the world have taken samples and contextual (meta)data to test protocols and logistics. The Earth Microbiome Project has offered to do a first round of 16S ribosomal RNA tag sequencing.

Participants and Sampling Sites:

Pierre Galand (Banyuls), Georgios Kotoulas (Crete), Burak Ali Cicek (Cyprus), Gunnar Gerdts (Helgoland), Adriana Zingone (Naples), Nathalie Simon (Roscoff), Frank Oliver Glöckner (MPI Bremen, Micro B3), Julia Schnetzer (MPI Bremen, Micro B3), Melody Clark (Rothera), Viggó Þór Marteinsson (Iceland), Tim Smyth (Western Channel Observatory), Linda Amaral Zettler (MBL, Woods Hole), Ian Salters (Banyuls), Neil Davies (Moorea).