The Northwest Pacific Action Plan (NOWPAP) participated as an observer in and contributed to a virtual meeting of the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) Marine Environmental Quality Committee (MEQ) on September 23, 2020. The meeting reviewed the progress of MEQ, discussed high priority items to be reported to the PICES Science Board, and new topics and directions for MEQ development.
One of the issues discussed was the need to strengthen collaboration with partner organizations, i.e. NOWPAP, Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation (CERF), the Centre for Environmental Management of Enclosed Coastal Seas (EMECS).
In interventions from NOWPAP, Dr. Yegor Volovik, NOWPAP Coordinator, reconfirmed that NOWPAP was firmly committed to the cooperation in the field of biodiversity conservation and pollution monitoring with PICES at the current level, and meanwhile, to consider ways to extend the scope of cooperation. He introduced the NOWPAP Regional Node on Marine Litter of the Global Partnership on Marine Litter (GPML), which UNEP provides Secretariat to, and implements a few projects on microplastics. It was stressed that NOWPAP can serve as an avenue and facilitate the cooperation between PICES and the NOWPAP Member States.
Following Dr. Volovik, Dr. Takafumi Yoshida, Senior Research of NOWPAP’s Special Monitoring and Coastal Environmental
Assessment Regional Activity Center (CEARAC), introduced the NOWPAP Mid-Term Strategy 2018-2023 and relevant activities of NOWPAP. Specific focus was put on activities in 2020-2021, which include projects on marine microplastics, marine protected areas network, a regional action plan on marine and coastal biodiversity conservation, an assessment of the distribution of tidal flats/ salt marshes, a training course on e-DNA analysis, cases study of estimating seagrass blue carbon, the NOWPAP Eutrophication Assessment Tool, a training course on remote sensing data analysis. He proposed future PICES-NOWPAP collaboration on Harmful Algal Blooms, e-DNA, pollution monitoring, and remote sensing data analysis. The meeting welcomed the proposals of NOWPAP representatives.
Along with NOWPAP, other partner organizations (CERF, EMECS) also presented their current activities and perspectives on future work with PICES.
