Photo credit: CICESE
A group of 20 early-career scientists representing 11 nations in Latin-America and the Caribbean had the chance to attend a training course on ocean acidification, 5-10 September 2016 in Ensenada, Mexico, organized by the IAEA Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre (OA-ICC) in partnership with the Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education of Ensenada (CICESE) and the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC). The course also benefitted from financial support from the Programa Mexicano del Carbono (PMC).
The training course sought to give participants entering the field of ocean acidification a solid theoretical framework and practical hands-on experience needed to set up coherent experiments. An international group of highly experienced lecturers shared their expertise in ocean acidification observation and data collection, experimental protocols and data interpretation, as well as possible shortcomings and ways to avoid pitfalls.
Photo credit: Pablo Trucco (UABC)
The issues covered by the training course included the carbon dioxide (CO2) system in seawater and relevant measurements; instrumentation available for measuring seawater chemistry parameters; software packages used to calculate CO2 system parameters; and key aspects of ocean acidification experimental design, such as manipulation of seawater chemistry, biological perturbation approaches, and laboratory- and field-based methods for measuring organism calcification and other physiological responses to seawater chemistry changes, including nuclear and isotopic techniques. In addition, the workshop agenda included a half-day “Mini-symposium” with presentations by the lecturers to a wider audience, including academic staff (researchers and students), but also local stakeholders such as representatives from the oyster and mussel aquaculture industry.
Another essential goal of this capacity building exercise was to offer the participants networking opportunities for future collaborative projects in Latin America and the Caribbean, including through the LAOCA network.
