The annual meeting of the Marine Environmental Quality Committee (MEQ) of the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) was held online on 22 September 2021. The meeting reviewed the implementation of PICES 2019 decisions. The Section on Ecology of Harmful Algal Blooms in the North Pacific (S-HAB), the Advisory Panel on Marine Non-indigenous Species (AP-NIS), and the Working Group on Indicators of Marine Plastic Pollution (WG 42) reported their activities in 2020 and proposed plans for 2021 and beyond.
The Northwest Pacific Action Plan (NOWPAP) was invited to the Marine Environmental Quality Committee (MEQ) meeting. Dr. Takafumi Yoshida, Senior Researcher of NOWPAP's Special Monitoring and Coastal Environmental Assessment Regional Cooperation Centre (CEARAC), delivered a presentation on behalf of NOWPAP. He introduced the NOWPAP Medium-Term Strategy (2018-2023) and highlighted a number of relevant NOWPAP activities including the "Development of NOWPAP EcoQO Targets Aligned with SDG Indicators: Phase 2", "State of Marine Environment in the NOWPAP region (SOMER3)", "Regional Overview of Microplastics Abundance in River Runoff of the NOWPAP region", and "Annual Summary of Major Marine Environmental Data (DINRAC)", etc. Dr. Yoshida also presented the NOWPAP’s work on eutrophication assessments, oil and Hazardous Noxious Substances (HNS) spills, marine litter, as well as the conservation of marine and coastal biodiversity. These activities were stressed to be truly multi-facet and included a training course on environment DNA, updates of the HAB database, seagrass blue carbon calculations, maintaining of Red List species, and the development of Regional Action Plan for Marine and Coastal Biodiversity Conservation (RAP BIO), as well as several other activities. He specifically pointed out that most of the above-mentioned activities were directly related to or coordinated with relevant PICES expert groups.
Also, NOWPAP has closely cooperated with PICES in the past years in the field of Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB), Non-indigenous and alien species, marine litter. NOWPAP is keen to further expand the scope of cooperation, improve data and information sharing, organize joint meeting sessions or workshops, and prepare joint publications under the umbrella of the Post 2020 biodiversity targets, UN Ocean Decades and UN Sustainable Development Goals. The meeting warmly welcomed the proposal of NOWPAP.
