It's anybody both in the room as well as those of you who are online. Please put the questions in the side. Oh, and we're monitoring that as we're going with that. I feel like maybe you want to want to start with some comments. Happy to start. So, I think everybody knows who I am at this point, but Jim McManus division director motion sciences. I am happy that Rick is here. Rick might not be as happy as I am, but, but as to the set in the beginning, Rick was really, shall we say, on the ground floor of the, the first, or the previous Cale survey. And so I couldn't possibly provide you with the context that Rick, Rick would have in the comments. That's relevant to your question about what is the, what did the division do you want to the previous decadal survey and so I'm going to turn it over in just a second and we let Rick talk through that, but, but I want to sort of emphasize as a matter of, of matter, of course, that we, we are here to help answer your questions. So, if we're not answering a question, it either means we can't, we will tell you that and or we're, we may not understand that that's what, that's what you want. And so we're what I'm saying in a long winded way. Those who know me know I do that is we would like this to be about dialogue. So we're here to help you. We're here to help you help us. Thank you, Jim. And I guess before I should have maybe preface this whole session with the idea that this isn't really about like, I don't want this to come across as well. We produced a DSALS1 report and what did NSF do with that? Did you do everything we told you to do? That's not what this conversation is about. It really is about more, you know, what is it that we can do? How can we help you help us? And what kind of a report would we have to produce in order for it to be really truly actionable? So that's, that's really the information we're after. We also realize that the landscape when the first report was put together was very different compared to what it is now. And we've actually spent, one of our subcommittees has spent a significant amount of time thinking about the way in which the landscape is different. And so there, too, I think we're going to be listening right to what you have to say with that lens on that the landscape then was different, that the committee then was really asked very specific questions. And we're being asked different specific questions for good reasons. And the more we understand about how the landscape was then, the better it is, I think, that we can relate what we do to the landscape that we have right now. So let's keep that in mind also. Yeah, thank you. I also want to draw attention to the fact that Jim Yoder, who's co-chair of the current DSOS was a member of that first committee as well. And so he also has, you know, knowledge from that committee's perspective. So you have Jim on that committee. I was the recipient of the report. And we have Jim here and Shelby from NSF, but Jim calling for the current report. Picking up on Tuba's main point, it was a long time ago that I was there. And I received this report, which was a beautiful, I'm truly, in January of 2015, as I said earlier, I've been there full time about three weeks. I've been a casual for the previous six months or so back and forth, but I really knew very little. And it was one of those times when I remember I got the preview version one day ahead of time before the report was issued. And it came out of email. And I remember just thinking, when I click on this PDF, my life is going to change. I just have no idea how, you know, how would you get that review from somebody like, like, oh, God, I want to run first before I can put any. Yeah, exactly right. And it was a very, very different time. Budgets are always difficult. Then the times you're particularly acute infrastructure was the real name driver, as I understand in in issuing that report with the with a flat budget and infrastructure costs continuing to rise as a matter of inflation and human personnel costs and fuel and everything. The infrastructure cost rising meant there was an erosion in the science budget, the science programs, the four core programs, plus all the ancillary programs that are interdisciplinary, so on and so forth. Two comments, first of all, is the team in NSF was perhaps the best team of scientists I've ever, scientists and staff I've ever worked with. And so it was truly a pleasure to be able to work with them upon receipt of this report. Secondly, I considered that report as a true gift because it was very well written. It was very targeted. And, you know, when you come in as a big leader to some, whatever unit it is, you're often asked to put together a strategic plan. Well, I didn't have to do that. And all these other plans to be it was delivered to me literally three weeks upon my ride. And with the talented staff that we had in particular. Section heads and program managers and everybody don't know how many staff there are now, but there are 42 total staff at the time, including admin support. So it's a small group of focus group and we're able to roll our sleeves and work on it, you know, together. It was a long time ago between Jim and myself. There was another division director, Terry Quinn. And so he dealt with some of the items to my understanding that I was not able to feel it. The short answer I have is we took the report extremely seriously. We went through it with all the program managers recommendation by recommendation graph by graph. And analyzed it and dissected and figured out where we agreed where we agreed strongly where we agreed we agree and then where we where we disagreed. We kept NSF's leadership fully informed. I recall going up. Sometimes being asked sometimes being demanded up to the director's office and it was France court of the time. And she had a suit change hard copy and it was highlighted and I posted it everywhere and she would open it up and say, what do they mean by recommendation 4.1 to a. Jesus. So, you know, getting into I point that out somewhat anecdotally, but I'm assuming that NSF leadership will be paying attention to this congressional staff pay attention to these decadal surveys. I was called up to those to Congress for private meetings about it as well and so on. So it's a big deal. It's not just a report that lands and that goes on to the show. We were pretty successful. I think in achieving the main goal to a first order. We had detailed conversations about how to decrease the cost of infrastructure and transfer those monies dollar for dollar. They stayed within OCE. They did not get vacuumed up to Geo. They did not get vacuumed up to, you know, telescopes or something else in the foundation. All, you know, worthy investments, but we were also given the gift inside the building that those dog guaranteed to stay in OCE. And so every dollar we were able to economize and I do mean that not just in a bureaucratic. Gentle way, but we really focused on economizing what infrastructure was doing where some infrastructure was less of a priority as perceived by the community and dollar for dollar. They went into the core science programs by the end of my time there. And some of these decisions were quite controversial. But by the end of my time there, we had transferred roughly $25 million out of infrastructure side into the science programs, the core science programs and in particular. And in particular. Otec. Andy Baker. Yeah. How we did it was, fortunately, those 41 people, they were all. They were, they are all involved in infrastructure and they're all involved in science support. And so that real guarantee and the dollars were transferred internally and stay within OCE. A person would be saying, okay, well, I sure I'm going to miss that infrastructure, but on the other hand, I oftentimes the exact same person and we're going to certainly welcome the investment in the science program. And that was what we did for three and a half years. With the drilling program, the big three being the drilling program, OII and the academic research with the drilling program, in particular, because there's congressional language and long term contracts and so on. We did not have much flexibility. So we focused on economizing the money that was going to the US science support program and say, oh, the, it's so many activities of drilling. With the OII, we removed the two southern ocean moorings, one in the southern ocean, one in the Argentine basin. Those were each about $8 million. That was extremely controversial to do. People lost their jobs at various oceanographic institutions because there was no longer a need and we were acutely aware of that, but we had to do it and we did. And then with the academic research fleet, we did a lot of things with various operators. The main thing that we took up was the seismic research vessel, Marcus Langseth, which at the time was owned by NSF, and that was a that was deemed to be, you know, financially non sustainable on our part. So we had deep and long conversations with Lamont about how to make that more sustainable. We put a cap on their dollar values that we were awarding them and then initiated a long process that I think it was during Terry Quinn's time. Lamont ended up owning the vessel, you know, eventually so we got it off the assess points. That was very controversial about what we did. So that was the landscape. It was actually simple to understand the tasking and it took a lot of people in the building in OCE in GEO and at the director's level to make it all kind of work out, but it was pretty much infrastructure is eating our lunch scientifically. We've got to put some caps and controls on that and then move over those months, which we were able to do. I won't get into all the internal discussions we had about it, but we really encouraged and animated conversations in that way. So two things that one thing that I'm hearing is that you had to make some difficult decisions. And while you were doing that, you have a report that you can point to well scientific community wants us to make these decisions in some sense that that enables you to keep moving in that direction, even when you're meeting resistance. In that sense, that's why it was a gift. Right. And, but the second thing I'm hearing is that there was a lot of visibility of the first report all the way up and down the NSF architecture, you know, the ocean. And is that and that maybe this is a question for Jim. Is that by default, every day cattle survey gets that kind of attention or, you know, how do we make sure that we write a report that will receive, you know, will be thumbed and, you know, underlined by folks up and down the chain at NSF. I don't know the answer to your question of how to get get the survey in the right places. What, what Rick did in ways I just couldn't have done because I don't have the historical context is really set the table for where we were then where we are now is much closer to focus on our priorities and what do we need to the future. And so in some ways the, the previous decadal survey was a little bit looking backwards and a little bit taking stock of where we are now and addressing those challenges that are much more immediate. And where what I would say is to get the right audience to the which I think is your question is it needs to be a much more of a visionary document than the previous document was. So it in in that document, I'm just going to use an example in that document. It talked a little bit about technology and the needs for technology going forward. The overprint of what that means for the future is even more important today. What do we need, what kind of infrastructure capabilities do we need to be doing our job well in 2035. I made this comment, I made this comment more than once, I'm doing my job correctly. The division director in 2035 won't be wondering what on earth was he doing me and this it's right. It would be much better if they didn't think about who was around in 2025, because it is operating in a way that makes a lot of sense in 2035. So, and I neither need the, the adoration if you will have success, nor the criticism of failure. I don't want either. I want success to be its own goal, and that success is 10 years from now. What are we doing, and what we put in place today, and that is your question to that's how I'm taking your question. What, what does our community need to put in place today, so that the, the basic research broadly defined community as well situated decade from now. We still have challenges that the sort of, I don't think Rick would say I want to put words in Rick's mouth, but I don't think Rick would say we did a bunch of things and all is great. Right. And so we're still addressing some of those, those legacy issues because you can't simply even though we're in the federal government. It'll be obvious, we can't move quickly inside the federal government very well, but we also can't inside our field. So it's just, it's not a snap of the fingers is all I'm all I'm saying. So that's why I am very focused on what can this report help us with over the next 10 years so that we're in a place where the following decade survey is is continuing to look forward and and look forward with what we've left behind. It's sort of a lot of fancy words but, but if you've read it. By the way, I reread it for the third time I've been in my job for 18 months I reread it for the third time yesterday, just to make sure it's heavy on exactly what Rick is talking about. That's not where we are and please don't do that. And, and so really aspirational is what we need. The other thing that was mentioned and it's not a subtlety. It often gets, and I think everybody in this room is aware of it. But the decadal survey is one of a number of inputs that we take. And Rick mentioned the Hill. Lots of those folks know who I am. And I participated my colleague Shelby Walker is often in those meetings, often related to facilities and questions from the Hill about facilities so keep in mind that we're not the only voice here. We have lots of voices, the Executive Office of the President congressional folks. The upper reaches of the foundation, you know, NSF has a strategic plan. It has aspirational goals as well it's important that we that we are cognizant of those as we move forward. So, lots of feedback we get, I think there's about a half a dozen, we normally say that we get get feedback from and this is this is certainly an important one. I don't think I've answered any questions. You did great. So, in fact, let me let me ask you a clarifying question because you sort of into the book, I think.  Where are we at in terms of the landscape today about how all of that works in a very different place. Okay. I'll tell you what I can. There much the infrastructure side of the NSF house, if you will, is managed slightly differently than it was a few years ago, compared to the basic research side of the house. And so what that really means is the freedom to move back and forth. It's much, much harder. What happened 10 years ago might not be able to happen today. I don't want to speak in absolutes, but I will say that the where we the good news of where we are. And my colleague Shelby can sort of contradict me if I'm wrong, but we are dedicated as as an institution to taking care of our facilities quite frankly, and in ways that maybe we haven't been as attended to the rising costs of of executing on those both in terms of in terms of labor parts, you know, you all know, I don't need to tell anybody in this room that shipbuilding has not gone up linear, linearly the last couple of years, it has gone up way way faster than it was going 10 years ago. Simple access to materials you all know, coming out of the pandemic that supplies are not what they were 10 years ago. So all of these factors roll into, we've really got to have a lot more. Eyes on the facility side of what we do and Shelby's position, which is relatively new in the in the directorate is C helps us oversee at the directorate level, how facilities are being executed within the divisions and then there's a parallel at the up in the on the 19th floor. So, we're doing things quite differently than we did once before so that the real point is that movement back and forth is much, much harder. Susan, I see you have your hand up. And usually, you know, even if you are a committee member in the room, if you want to ask a question, let's use the hand on zoom kind of equalize access to questions with it. Oh, and I think you're coming in on. On. Yeah. So I had a question because 2035 to me it sounds like it's way out there in the future. I think now it's, you know, from a planning purpose, it's not, but thinking about how, you know, we get caught by surprise surprises very often. And I'm thinking there's something like the pandemic or what really happened. I think one of the things that happened last time was that escalation and the fuel costs. And so I'm wondering, is that something that this community should think about the, you know, from the surprises and it could be a new technology, right? It could be some fabulous new technology that really, you know, the ocean community adopts. And suddenly, our needs are a little bit different. I'll answer that from my perspective. I would say. No. And in a word. We can't. We inside. The federal government is very difficult for us to plan for the unforeseen. And so having asked high level aspirational goals and things, directions we need to be going. Need to be pretty resistant to. Another global pandemic. And day to day. The team inside of OCE will deal with those problems as they come up, but I would say that. That's not energy well spent. Yeah, well, one of the things that I, you know, makes me think about it is that helps us understand what level to think about those aspirational goals. You don't want them to be too specific. Correct. Absolutely. If I can add something to that, not about what's going on in the building now, because I don't know. But one thing I think it's very important for people to recognize is that NSF still needs to be doing their job of running the programs they have meeting the needs of the community. And the day to day, really important work. It's not like you're going to receive a report. And stop everything else they're doing and throw all their dedication into implementing a report because they've got the very real pressures of the day to day of everything that's going on at sea on land programs and so on. So there's a, there's a blending of the implementing the aspiration, implementing what they're currently responsible and enthusiastic about and moving in that direction. So that's another important component to keep going. So, but the question about the question about the specificity of our recommendations actually deltales really well. Jason with a question that you have in style. So, Jason, you want to ask a question. Yeah, thank you. In the last report. 10 primary questions. You say is that going to cover to me from that structure. At one level, I'm curious to see how well that played out. But that's second. The question is, you know, the statement of tasks and give us two or three by options. Otherwise, I get that with the manager. There's a tension between two or three priorities and a level of specificity versus everybody that goes on this committee. I was just saying, Hey, here's a great idea. Why don't you champion this? What is the right balance? Where should we have, can we have a discussion about that because I'm concerned. If we get too limited, we're going to miss them. I see the other day to specific. Yeah, it's a clear question. It's clear. It's probably clearer than my answer is going to be, but what I read through the decay, the previous decadal report as I was working my way through some of the science nuggets. Some of my reactions were, well, that's just a proposal. And so for context, I spent decades on soft money writing proposals. I was a program officer, a rotator. So it is easy for I find it easy to look at something and see, is that a priority or is that a proposal? Keep in mind. What Rick is saying is that we've got this infrastructure. Rick didn't use these words. I'll use these words. We're in the proposal receiving business, right? And so at the very core of what we do, we are constantly looking for innovative ideas. The fact that a particular question or a particular path or path of research written in the Cale survey is not going to impact a decision about whether or not a proposal was funded. And so, so there's a broad spectrum between what the this report would say from the perspective of their individual proposal ideas to very visionary where the field needs to be and be going. And what I would say is lean way this way. If, if you query a question and say, well, that's a, that's a half million dollar proposal. That doesn't belong in the Cale survey. And that's what I would say. Others may. So if I could follow up, you're saying. Yes, please. Yeah, yeah. That brings to mind another question for me at least. I went back and read the original Bush report that led to the creation of the National Science Foundation. That was an interesting read as well. Because NSF, after all, is the science, basic science agency for the US. There's a couple of questions on silo about how the work that NSF does relates to other agencies. But Mona, I think your question is really timely. About that definition, that piece of that, do you want to ask the question. Sure. So, basic research, who does NSF mean by basic research broadly speaking as we sell. And how does it differ from views inside research because in many civilizations, we see views inspired views and co-production. So, to what extent do you want us to focus on co-production, views inspired, the assumption in which other disciplines are moving. And so I think in the tasks, it's pretty clear that I would like this committee to address that question. So, your last questions to what extent do. Part of the charge here is, I need you to answer that question. Okay, so we have a basic research framework and it's how we operate is under that framework. If you want to see something of a difference in approach, so use inspired to me and I did not read the Bush document, by the way, just in full disclosure. But as we as a, as a, as an agency, we think about use inspired research, which on the spectrum of things is between apply and basic research. And, but it's driven by a use question, right. So it's basic research apply to that question. If you will, it's not, you know, I hope this is a little bit clear. It must not be perfectly clear in my mind, I have a clear answer. But, but it really, we are at a point in the ocean sciences community, where we're asking the question, how much or and what of use inspired work, where do where do we fit in and we belong as a community. I think we belong there. I'm happy to reveal my own feelings on this and I would also say, we do this work now. We're, I could rattle off a bunch of examples but at the risk of getting some of them wrong. I don't want to do that but but we already operated the space. What else can we be doing in the use inspired space, still very much consistent with what we want to do. But it's, it's a spectrum there's not, it's not a simple A or B choice. There's one of my colleagues likes to use NSF a and NSF B to describe where we are so we sit on that spectrum all the time. It's not just NSF B or NSF a where 1 is use inspired on his basic research. There's a spectrum. Let's see. I have a lot of questions on silo. I know we're not going to get to all of them. And I also see that we have folks joining who are going to be part of our next panel, which we were going to start at nine, but we're about 15 minutes running late. So I hope it's okay. I hope you all have the time to accommodate for that. Rose, Debbie, Doug, Bob, and yes, I'm getting some thumbs up. So thank you for that. Let's see. Let me go to a G and then Peter, since you all are. So, from what I said, I've seen a little bit of more, the things change the more they stay the same. And it doesn't seem to me that the challenges are that different in some fashion, but very specifically to this before, I do worry that I might be misunderstanding something and what I'm confused about something like your presentation. You were asking for something that's original. I have been thinking that we need to have it in some fashion grounded in reality. So that what we suggest actually useful as opposed to fantasy need to find some space between the two very specifically I guess to illustrate that in the previous report, almost every priority question had at end of it. I know how difficult that is. And so we don't make suggestions like that that, you know, I'm just not going to make that much progress. So I just wonder if you can clarify. That's a good question. As I mumbled, I know you know, but what I would say in the last year and a half of my time in O. C. E. There's, there is a much, much greater awareness for talking across the federal family where, you know, I could be getting part of this wrong but a lot of the crosstalk amongst the federal family was very historically was very much focused on program officer to program officer. That still occurs. But what I'd say is now we sort of all the way up to the 19th floor, those, that's how many floors we have so all the way up to the 19th floor, those conversations are happening and so as much as we can, we are constantly trying to figure out how we can solve challenging problems that individual agencies may have together and that that's happening, maybe not day to day but but it's happening pretty frequently I spend a lot of my time in interagency meetings. And as you know, our separate bureaucracies are often gentle herbs. I was just saying one thing to that just to the community is the the interagency working group environment that IWG is very, very robust and I believe it still remains robust. And what Jim is talking about is very, very true. There's a lot of conversations between the different agencies at mid and low level levels and also relatively high levels and speak to that point, you know, directly. So just a quick point is I've been thinking that you're talking about the balance between making suggestions on how you do something and what you do. Correct. And you do you want to say anything about your desire for vision on either end. I would please minimize the how suggestions. Unless folks really do have a way a way forward on particular I spent a lot of my time on how and so do my colleagues in the division how we can actually accomplish something and I'll give you an anecdote without any specificity so I don't get anybody in trouble, but there are at times conversations where someone may say, I'd appreciate your help, but it's probably more trouble than it's worth. And we've got this. So that that's okay. That's life. Right. No, I don't need your help. I've got this myself. And so those conversations are are just part of the dialogue. And so sometimes you might not see us working with no just pick an agency on something because it's better if we don't So, anyways, let, let us worry about the half. Okay, I'm going to go to Peter. All right, thank you, but thank you both for sharing your thoughts. I'll keep it short, but it's what you said about the kind of separation and management between infrastructure and basic. And with that, my attention as we think about developing this report, I want to make sure we don't proceed from sort of poor assumptions, right. Are we really talking to kind of two different management entities. In other words, if we're making recommendations, are you would you encourage us to not say, oh, you know, infrastructure, you know, support can move from here to basic research. We should really be saying, here's an infrastructure recognition. Here's a basic research recommendation. That's, that's what I'm hearing you say. Then I am a fact of it communicating that message. Very good. Thank you. Marcia, I think you'll have a question on Silo if you want to ask that. Yes. So, um, you said that we shouldn't anticipate things like rising fuel costs. And Susan asked that. However, there are some trends such as the cyber trends. So we have an exponential increase in data. We have the advent of AI now. I understand not anticipating things that we can't anticipate like a global pandemic, but can you make a couple of comments about realizing that we have trends going forward and anticipating the effects of those trends. That's sort of like the landscape now being different from 10 years ago. Yeah. So, um, not exactly sure how to answer that question, but I'm going to steal something from your language and use it as an example. So you mentioned cybersecurity. Well, just to be clear, cybersecurity is a part of it, but the whole cyber infrastructure, so data storage, data access, computing infrastructure and security, I would say is kind of all part of that next day. Yeah, so it's no secret because we put an ad out on the street for somebody, a program officer on cyber infrastructure, cybersecurity, who would work underneath our integrated programs, aka facilities infrastructure. So our recognition that this has grown as very much part of the portfolio of things we do under the under the offices of our data collection and in our facilities is getting us to respond to, okay, we need some more expertise in this space. I know the Unal's office thinks about this as well. And lots of our colleagues within the foundation all the way up again to the 19th floor is we hired a person recently in the foundation. So I don't remember this title, but it's very much in this space. And so, do you remember his title? See your advisor. So we are responding to what is sort of the growth. And maybe you applied the explosion of data, cyber infrastructure and cybersecurity challenges. And so we're doing what we can. It is reasonable to make recommendations in this particular space, knowing that we are moving in this direction as well. Thank you, Jim. So we have a few minutes left. And there is a question online from Mark Abbott that I think is an interesting one, because it relates to Jim, what you said about what versus how. The first DSAS report did have some items where they were sort of saying here's how you do it and how easy was it to respond to that or not. Mark, really it's a two part question I see and I don't know if you can unmute yourself and ask it yourself. I'll just watch the zoom here. There you are. Yeah, it's actually recommendation number seven in the report talks about creating a high level. If standing infrastructure committee that would look 10 years out and would look at 10 year plans and look at puts and takes on the whole infrastructure side. I can't see if that anywhere in the NSF documents. If that was ever created. And if it is or whatever it is, there are all sorts of issues. What are the issues right now. So for example, renewal and maybe it'll be in the next section renewal of the global class ships, but also biogeochemical Argo. There's a one shot. What are the. What are the larger issues that the NSF OCE division is looking at in terms of high level structure. And I think, even though it is sort of a high, a high recommendation, it really is. We really want the agency to always be looking. You know, at least 10 years out in terms of infrastructure, because that's sort of the timescale. So it's a bit of a, how do we engage the community in that planning process? I'll stop there. Thank you. Very quick answer. Hi, Mark. This is very, very, very quick answer to the 1st part with that recommendation. We decided not to put together that committee of the time. Because we wanted to get that house in order as it were 1st, get to a particular point of stasis of doing the very 1st round of realignment and then leaving it to the future leadership of NSF, not as a punt, but as a. Need to get things and then that committee, if NSF shows at the time, we do, you know, would move in that direction. So that was a conscious decision on our part at the time, but. Over to Jim, I guess, for the rest. Yeah, so Mark. That's probably the one recommendation I read. Again, yesterday thinking, I wonder what they mean by that. Well, and so I interpreted that a little bit that it was a community driven oversight community. And what I would say is internally, we have grown our institutional oversight on facilities that actually I'm going to ask Shelby if she'd be willing to comment on that at all. No, is an acceptable answer, by the way. I think oversight is probably not the term you want to use here. I think oversight is within the agency. So we're thinking about the community input into portfolio of assets that we're considering, you know, that that is, you know, that is advisory and nature that is something to be considered. You know that conversations have existed within NSF as to what level does that really live when we think major facilities. So things that are supported out of our major research equipment facilities construction. There's the sort of eternal debate of, well, how do we prioritize this and how do you then prioritize, say something coming from astronomy or something like that. It's, it's difficult to sort of figure out what the level would be within NSF as an agency. But certainly feasible within the Geoscience Directorate or within the division of the sciences. And I would say that we just need to be cognizant of, again, the level of the assets that we're considering within that portfolio. Is it ship? Is it something like OECC? Is it, you know, something that is one of the distribution or smaller equipment? So it's, again, advisory and major oversight. So, Tuba, can I ask a follow up on this? Do you have time? Thank you, Mark. Because we are out of time, but yeah, I feel like there's one more question that came in silo that is really important. So Kristen, I want to give you the floor to ask you a question really quick and that that'll be our last question and we'll move on. I have two questions. Yeah, the one, the second one about a strategy. Um, yeah, Jim. So you asked us to focus on the what not how. Yeah, I think I answered the original question on thinking in terms of a spectrum of leaning. So. Yeah, I think I answered the original question on thinking in terms of a spectrum of leaning. So it is okay to get strategy. No doubt from the committee, which is that, which is how. A little bit, but what I would say is you. My answer is heavily biased by my reading yesterday of the previous to chaos report, which was way too heavy on the how for what we need now. So, so is this is an appropriate way if we are recommending strategies. We don't want to get too prescribed. Correct. Well, as you were saying, like a, where it certainly found like a proposal, but we can give for examples or things like that that help, you know, we need a strategy to address law. Here are some possible ways forward. Is that an appropriate approach? Yeah, that's, that's an appropriate approach. The sort of further down the road on that would be, you need to talk to know about this specific thing. We probably already have. So, so I would stay out of overly prescribing how we might execute something. Thank you for that clarification. Excellent. And those of you who are online or in the room, if you have further questions, please do put them in slide. Oh, so we have a record of it. And I think Mark, just from his. Follow up question in there too. So we're aware where he's thinking was going. And with that, I want to thank Rick and Jim for talking to us this morning. And we want to transition to our next panel on the status and future of the academic research. And Jim is online and on. I'm going to tap him for moderating this conversation. Okay, can you hear me okay. You can. Okay, fine. I'm going to talk about the academic research fleet and by that we mean operationally those of the, those are the ships that are scheduled through you know, they do not include the NOAA research ships, or some of the ships that are operated by private foundations. So we're talking about the, the, the you know, scheduled ships. And just very briefly that the way the, the way these ships are managed has been a very effective partnership for many years and that that includes the Navy and NSF who have built or acquired most of the ships that are in the unals, they're in the unals and also unals itself, which is a community based organization that does the scheduling, and also the individual institutions that operate the ships, and also provide things like docs and space for the ship ops groups to participate in in a very effective partnership that some will continue to be effective in the future. So with that, I'd like to have our panelists begin their presentations. I'm going to stop watch these things so that I'll give you a warning when you've got hit nine minutes because we really want to save time for questions. But the, I'll go down the list unless the panelists have some other suggestion but Jim, so all right, okay, that's okay. It's fine with me Debbie go ahead. Okay, so I've got a few introductory remarks and then we'll go into the the presentations and then I'll wrap things up. So I was elected chair of the unals council about three years ago, even though I had spent what almost 30 years as a researcher going out on unals ships I served at the National Science Foundation. I thought I had a pretty good idea, as I'm watching, I thought I had a pretty good idea of of the fleet and yet it's been a really eye opening experience. So some things I'd like kind of the frame of reference that I'd love to have you consider some of the data you're about to see and is when I started in grad school in 1986, the United States was the unquestioned leader in ocean science. And in many, many fields now that is not the case, which I think should be alarming to everyone. One of the things you're going to see from Doug Russell is the academic research fleet has been cut in half over the last 50 years, which I think is really concerning and the fact that this decline in what is a foundational infrastructure for the kind of research that we do has continued over the last 20 years, while other countries, most importantly, China have made these massive investment investments in ocean research is very concerning. And when you consider the geopolitical landscape we're in right now, to allow this trajectory and to continue I think affects our national security and it affects our economic competitiveness. It's, we just have to stem what's happening right now. And I also think it goes farther than just the United States. I mean, there's a lot of knowledgeable people in the room there that know that humanity is facing a a existential crisis right now in terms of climate change. And the ocean is the largest driver of the global carbon cycle. We're testing an infrastructure that we need to not only understand how the ocean works, but is of a scale that we can begin to test solution based research is absolutely critical, not just to the US but to the quality of life that literally billions of people will have in the future. So while we're talking about the academic research fleet today. You know this is not an ivory tower academic question. This fleet is foundational to what we need to do to rise to the challenges we're facing right now as a country and literally as a species, and I think all of us need to keep that in mind in the field that we're in right now. So with that I'm going to turn it over to Doug Russell, who's executive secretary for unals. If you want to talk about the unals fleet answer some of the questions that you've given him that you've asked us to address, then rose to four is going to give you the NSF perspective. Rob spirit will give you the own our perspective. Kip Sherman, who is the chair of the fleet improvement committee is going to talk about the fleet we need in the future, and then I'll come back with a few takeaway messages. So with that, take it away Doug. Thanks for having us. What I'm going to cover today. I think a lot of you already know about much this but we want to make sure you have the information to win your report. And also, we know it'll be. It'll really be a catalyst for you asking more questions to us so I'm glad I always provide all the data you need to help you generate report but I'll give you the review where the fleet is today what it's doing. This is it's not just the ships. There's a lot more of this as you well know that make the ships able to go out and support science and for you to be successful out of there so we don't want to review all that. So expression reminds us you're answering this tough question of, what's the science tomorrow, what do we need to be able to do that science tomorrow and help us, you know, as we define where we're going to go next 10 years. So what's the fleet today right now 17 ships. We know they're global class down to the smaller global coastal ships, their own by national foundation. I'm a partner of the Navy. It might be that hopefully not causing problems. And of course, and universities own a lot of their own vessels operated by 13 different institutions currently, while waiting for the first the RCR visa come online will be back to 14 operating institutions, as we're currently set up. And we coordinate all the access to the vessels and equal equitable fashion to the community. And we make sure the ships operate. We our partners. And it's particularly the agency is make sure the ships operate to the higher standard research vessel safety standards. Our ships are the safest ships out there on the ocean, which is really incredible, which is important. We take students that would be scientists that would take non mariners out to sea to do hard work. And really the fleet, you know, the fleet, the global class ships, the land as the Thompson, the rebel, the Sikuli act and Langseth, which we already talked about, focuses on scientific research primarily but they do a lot of general ocean research these days to help us with the, all the demand we have and we'll talk more about that. The ocean intermediate class to kill one of the endeavor, which is where we're going to talk a little more about when she can be retired, given that with the schedule is with the RCR these, of course, the bios of the next floor. And of course, the, the, the astronaut class a selling ride and the Armstrong work horses for the fleet these days, the sharp, and then the RCR these which will will touch on down the road here. The future home of the Gilbert Mason which is really incredible where to do this. And our small vessels which are so important to getting future oceanographers out to see that it's a future scientist this is where we get their fundamental training, as well as doing important local coastal research so these are critical to our fleet as well. The pelican, you know this down the road a little bit sprawl Savannah won't submit the blue heron and Rachel Carson. So, Debbie touched on it briefly. Where is the fleet gone since, you know, started in 1972. We've cut in half we're down to 17 vessels right now. And with that, we've seen a decrease in births of sea for scientists were down 4% and births right now. And where we were not even long ago. But this will just give you the history when you're, as you're doing your deliberations where, where's the fleet been, where are we looking now in the next few years, in 2025, based on what we know the current, the current plans we know and this gives you this shows the trend, but it's interesting you see a couple of plateaus and you look at this. Along the way over the years of the fleet is done. They've been transitions has been flat toes and has been transitions. And right now we're kind of in a plateau. 18, you know, 17 18 ships. There's more than I mentioned, there's more than just the ships that make all this happen. See when research happened. Of course, the NDSF with Alvin century and Jason, which is just critical to the research and they keep invest investments in these keep these relevant. You know, Alvin's 50 plus years old and it's still, you know, it's still the sets the standard to the whole worldwide community and BC research and Jason century similarly. All these other pieces that get forgotten about but it actually are critical for the king successful science done. The technician, the technician pool, which allows us to keep, you know, the best technician to see with our scientists opposite Marcia was with an hour. This is a kind of learning lesson for us. We need to expertise and dredging pouring because that's something we don't do every day but it's critical to the scientists that were successful. We do go to see so it's been an investment in ourselves in the last few years. Let's develop centers of expertise. We've got to continue to do things like that. We see there's a problem. We've got it, you know, we need to have that capability down the road. Let's not forget that is part of this investment in infrastructure. Me so and pfp, pfp, those are all important to me and our more expertise. And there's also all the other pieces of software people side of it, but it's really critical like the multi beam advising me, we have keep investing in, you know, NSF and on our keep playing better and better multi beam systems. The need that needs for better mapping in the ocean box, we do better science. ODF, you know, is doing the collecting water all over the oceans, continue to monitor the trends and the changes that is critical. So these investments are still continue to be important will will in the future as well to do the science of tomorrow.  NSF and nowhere as best as so much in in the communications infrastructure last years, which allows more scientists to access in real time the ships and how to do the science to see. So we may have lost some bunks at sea, but a lot of more people actually have direct access, you know, to be able to engage the people on the ship at a time to see what's happening and to help modify change plans on on moments notice is really critical. You know, as community starts the federal agencies, you know these things, but it's just always good to have this in your record. Without the agencies, we wouldn't be able to support a science community that's where we're all focused, we're all here for. We've got 58 member institutions. All the most of them are very active in our community to help us find where we where we are where we want to go how we do it. This is all gets down to these the fleet we're talking about all the shipping facility operators and technical staff. That's all these are such important part of our community. There's a UNOS council that helps lead UNOS is the facilitator the coordinator the center of gravity for all this. And then that leads down to the office and we're kind of we handle the behind the scenes work to make all this happen. It allows me to enable the community to move forward, we engage in these important issues, and they help us move forward so they can provide advice to the agencies. And we can also deal with a lot of communication outside like the regulatory agencies on behalf of our community, which is a big piece of what we do as well. So, you know, we're nine communities now in, you know, is in the community. We've also expanded, you know, the last few years, you know, in recognition of where our, our, our society is now in there is now a standing committee which was initiated previously. And it's just like a subcommittee. It's just too important to elevate it to a higher level now and they impact a lot of what we do and shape how we do business. The safety committee we've added the recognizing we need more expertise in coordinating OBS is a more more critical to the geophysical community. So we've elevated elevated that created an early committee for them as well. You know, and, you know, so this is this is no surprise here, but it's just it's active it's busy. It's engaging. We've got and we've also added we've got some great big career scientists in a lot of these communities, these committees now, which are really taking these on really focus and really clear scientists. So we're not even thinking about where we go with facilities and the fleet and all the supporting facilities. Also, let's make sure we're taking part of the young scientists. We need them for the future for what you're looking at the next 10 years and beyond. And you know, the office, I won't give you all the details, but I will tell you, our task is responsible with staffing continue to grow because the complexities are getting bigger and bigger. And we are we have to support really the agencies, you know, NSF on our to be able to respond to a lot of the things that help enable the fleet to run dealing with like the Coast Guard requirements, for example, dealing with buying by America building America by America. There is so much stuff that has to have behind the scenes for your ship operators can operate these ships and support your science without being interrupted. You know, we've NSF is tasked us to hire a contract to support all the bureaucracy comes with a new, you know, good, well intended change, but the bureaucracy behind that is amazing. And our ship operators don't have extra people on top of that to answer all the questions and do all the inventories their ships and then go fight the battles for waivers, because we have every ship in the world these days has foreign components in them. And a lot of these systems on the ships, you cannot break apart and say this is by the American government inserted in that system possible to do right now. And so we have to answer a lot of questions so that we can keep operating NSF and keep ensuring the ships get maintained, you know, no one are, you know, it's just it's an amazing continuum. COVID-19 we've also became experts and writing guidance to the fleet about how we can do this safely. This is an example is why it's a complex world is getting more complex. The UNOS office continues to grow NSF and on our been amazingly supportive of us. But we, we are a little office keeps growing and, you know, it's part of the cost of running the fleet. Quite frankly. So how the fleet being used. I just show this real slide. This is what scheduling of the community looks like. And this is not any of all the ships. It is way complex. We look at a one year scheduled ships and most of the blue is underway doing science projects and purple and orange accommodations or, you know, transits and maintenance periods. Not so I don't expect you to look at this guy. It's funny. It is. There's a lot of pieces of this. It's, you can understand why it's difficult to cope with schedules every year for the community. Where is the fleet? Where's the fleet then it's been everywhere. And you know this, you're taking the ships to see our global is everywhere in the world, which is, and they're highly recognized and welcome around the world. So it's incredible. The amount of scientists still gets done. We will, these tables will be in there. I'm not going to dwell on it. I can tell you is we are back up and above where we were pre pandemic levels for that. How much, how many days are funded and see by the agencies. It's incredibly amount of work. And we're doing with less ships. But the ships are underway and we'll show you in a minute that they are well appalled for for every day of the year dedicated to being doing science. You know, and that's that's the important message. Our ships are fully utilized. There's a lot of other things that come with that and I'll show you in a minute, I'll explain it more, but I just want these tables are in there to show you that your fleet is well used. It's well supported by the agencies and NSF is the primary funder to this for as long as money in this. Doug, I want to interrupt you for a second. You've been going, you and Debbie have been going for about 1314 minutes. And if you want to save time for her at the end, we need to move on. So you should try to wrap up in the next minute or two. Okay, we'll do I can be done in a minute. And so this is the other one. This right here shows you how the ships are tied up with your underway doing science. They're getting ready to do science. They're undergoing inspections. They're doing major maintenance, which is a lot of it's required by the federal regulatory agencies. And, and then sometimes you have to deal with crewing issues and stuff like that. So I'll leave it in that. And this is more tables in here. We've taken a lot of people to see. These are the numbers for that well into that. I'm going to turn it over to Rose for her perspective. Hi, thank you very much, Doug. So I think as a group we decided that we were going to just do it all do our presentations together and re yield our time so I'm definitely not going to be taken the nine minutes. So there was the question is how might this look in the coming decade. So when we're looking at the science that we feel we're going to be doing in the coming decade. I feel like that's what we're asking the report to give us, but you know we have sustained observations that we foresee that we're going to continue to do. We recognize the change in biology, the paleo climate research that needs to be done, the geo hazard, we're highly invested in stem and outreach programs. So, we can make a very long list, but these are just a few items that are a few topics that we think we're going to continue doing in the next decade. And we hope that this report will inform that creativity that we're talking about. So next slide. We do ask for an update on the RC RVs and we, there was a meeting last week with the shipyard and so we have some new updated dates delivery of the first vessel the tiny will be one July 2025 vessel to one January 2026 and vessel three one June 2026 so they the after delivery there's about 262 days to outfit the ship to do sea trials to do a film realization of, you know, for the crew on how to run the ships. There's going to be warranty and fallout time there's the NSF inspection that satisfies that for acceptance into the unals. As a unit operator. So there's a lot that's going to be packed into that 262 days. And by the time we're all done in 2027 will have all three doing science. So some NSF successes I wanted to focus on some of the things that I think have been successful in the last decade, and you know whether we can improve on them in the next decade and if they need to talk about in the report, it's up to you but it's this idea of having barters so we can access foreign and other federal fleets. We already have a barter with NERC, and that gives us access to some of the European ships. And we think that that's important because reducing transits is helpful and getting more science done. We already have work in a certain region and we can, you know, add a cruise to where they're at and vice versa I think it's helpful for both of us. So we want to also increase, we want to continue that and and also add, for instance, Noah, we'd like to see if we can do barter with Noah, and a barter is something where you don't exchange money you just exchange ship time. You don't have a running tally of how much you owe each other and then you try to get onto their schedules. I think it's already been touched on by Jim, but there's definitely been increases in NSF infrastructure funding. So it's a different environment than we were when we did the last Decale survey. And I think that the foundation to their to our credit has realized that, you know, we don't want to be in a situation where the tail is wagon the dog so to speak but in order to have a very functional fleet we need to do the investments necessary to keep the ships maintained and there's a long list of items that were potentially deferred and and now we're catching up with that. One of the things that Doug mentioned in the increase in their staffing is a crewing coordinator. About two years ago we recognized that we were actually leaving cruises at the pier because we didn't have enough crew license crew to get underway. This became a critical issue we I think it was scripts that had a three month downtime because of lack of crew so anyway we ended up with a crewing coordinator, and I feel like it's been a big success. There are a few vacant positions now. And part of that was also recognizing some of the recommendations that came from a a crewing Tiger crew committee, and they provided a list of recommendations to the agencies that included increases in salary for crew members retention bonuses have ability. So we've been addressing all those things and luckily there's been money from NSF to be able to realize those goals. The deferred maintenance as I said had always been an issue in the past, when we had flat budgets which is actually a decline, we had to make hard choices. So we would always do the safety items first but there are other items that ended up being deferred and so those things we've been dealing with them last year to have ability upgrades. So you just need to go on foreign ships, and some of our partner agencies to see that we were kind of behind the times as far as have ability so we're trying to make our ships a little nicer to be on. And then scientific instrumentation is also seen an increase in funding. And then the pools, the wire pool, the winch pool, the band pools, the tech pools, those are all I think success stories and whether we can use that blueprint for other types of pools I think will be important. And I can show you that on the next slide. And then the other success I think we've had is the early career science training opportunities that's been going on for at least 12 years, maybe longer 14 years, 15 years. And we recognize that we need to make this a codified way of handling early career training opportunities but right now we're still doing it kind of ad hoc as opportunities present themselves. Okay, next slide. So challenges. We'll get into this discussion later because I think it's important, you know, we have the current mix of global and ocean class ships. And is it the right mix for the kind of science that we think we need to do in the next decade. We touched on cyber security. That's definitely something that we see now not on the horizon but now as an issue and so, as Jim mentioned, we have a new program director coming into OCE that will be all things cyber. The next thing I think I want to mention is the NDSF assets. So, everyone loves to use Century and Jason and Alvin and this can be difficult for scheduling. So, sometimes cruises have waited three or four years to get to see in order to get the ancillary assets that they need and the timing on the ship schedule so if there is a way to have duplications in some of those areas that would be that would help that that pressure we have with scheduling. So, this was a number that I got from Doug, but they did a little, you know, review on the Bunks for science community and there's been a 4% decline. And I think that's attributed to the fact that these ships are much more complex and you go into the bridge of these, these new ships and it's computer driven. So, with that we need to bring the people along that can support the bridge and the engine room so that takes away from Bunk space so how do we deal with that to you know and that's something like bringing in telepresence having more more satellite connectivity and and just figuring out ways to get the community on the ship remotely. You know, I hate to pick on killing one, but I'm just going to say that the ship when it was designed was designed for the type of science that we no longer hold as a priority. And so the things that we think our priority science for us and in the Pacific, the chemo killing one isn't the best ship for for doing that kind of science. And so I think on our will touch on that, but they have a decision and kind of an off ramp so to speak on whether to invest in a future midlife, or do we cut our losses and say the ship, even after midlife isn't going to support our priorities. And, you know, if we were to look at something like glider pools, this would be a force multipliers for bringing in PIs that may not have access to gliders but this makes it easier by having it taken care of through a pool. Um, greening the fleet. We have a requirement from the, the White House to get to net zero by 2050, which, you know, on one hand, we're bringing in. We want more globals. And we don't have the technology to get to that net zero. So that that's a big challenge for the fleet and how do can we do offsets to get to that those numbers that they're looking at. And then the harder question is the underutilization of the local and regional class vessels. So we've seen this big pressure on the global and ocean class ships, but not so much pressure on the local and regional class ships and you know why is that is, why is the science turned to these big science expeditions instead of looking mostly locally to do their science. So do we need to reevaluate how many local regional class ships we have in the area. So those are definitely hard questions and big challenges. I think that. Oh, yeah, I threw up. You want to go back just so you have some perspective on how the day rate is divided. So, you know, the way it's been 10 minutes. Okay, so if you don't want to, we can talk about that one later. Okay. Thanks. Thanks. Next slide please. Hi, I'm Rob Sparrick. I'm the program officer at the officer naval research responsible for a significant portion of the hardware related to the academic research fleet. O and R as an entity spends about 15% of the current operating budget. I try we'll try not to read these slides to you but the takeaway for the first bullet somebody use the term ground truth. Ground truth is going to be what Congress authorizes. So the Navy can make a plan. We do that with shipbuilding. The congressional budget office reviews it and analyzes it. And in the end, we get the fleet that Congress authorizes but you can't buy a ship without congressional authorization. We are about one of the questions you ask is what is the Navy plan for replacing the globals. Since that plan is still 12 years away. There is no formal plan, but even in the formal planning that the Navy does for shipbuilding. We do not include vessels like oceanographic research vessels. So all of our ship planning is based on what we call battle for ships. I will highlight though in the time frame between 2036 and 2042. The Navy expects three of the globals plus Kilimanjana, and incidentally, the no worship Ron Brown will reach their end of service life. So that's four ships, which are the huge portion of the academic fleet going away vessels that will have been around for four and a half decades. Also, in that same period of time competing for money will be midlife refits for the other two Navy owned ocean ocean class research vessels, plus the Sikulyak owned by the National Science Foundation. If you were to do some quick back of the envelope math, you're talking about a billion dollars in a very short period of time, something that historically does not happen very often. So this creates great opportunity because what you will get is a new fleet hypothetically that will last another four or five decades. The risk on the other hand is with shipbuilding. You've probably seen it in your questions related to RC RV, but any delay in a construction or midlife project means making hard choices such as investing money and keeping ships that have reached their end of service life and you're just trying to get them to get by or alternatively let gaps happen in the fleet capacity and that impact science. So my three kind of bullet takes away the Navy's plan is going to be the one that Congress approves with lots of churn and things in between. There's a period of time coming here and the time that you care about in the next decade, when there's a huge shift in the academic fleet. I can't overemphasize how big getting rid of four ships and replacing them with whatever the next thing is, because that's going to last four or five decades. On the other hand, because it's so many ships, and a lot of stuff going on, there's a lot of risk. So hopefully, we'll get it right. I'll end there. Thank you so much. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Robert. Now is some. Okay, Sherman's going on. Go ahead, Kate. Thanks Jim. I'm kept Sherman I'm a physical oceanographer from Oregon State University and I'm the chair of the fleet improvement committee. I'm going to sort of look at the near term and long term future of the academic research fleet. So we've touched on all these things but first, I'm going to present two slides one presents a somewhat shiny view of the future and the second one for shows some fairly stark facts. First off is autonomy in the future autonomy will be commonplace as the technology becomes more robust. First and foremost, though, autonomous platforms will never be a replacement for people going out on ships. Autonomous platforms are they add value to the research and so a nice example is exports from 2018 and 2019. That's what the schematic shows the field work for export used a combination of ships and autonomous platforms operating together. Right now, though, those operations primarily come from boutique operations at academic institutions. As the demand and scope of autonomous work grows. We may need to consider other modes of working for the autonomous fleet. Maybe things like a national facility. So, for example, the National Ocean, Agra National Oceanographic Center in the United Kingdom. They have the marine equipment pool, which has a lot of autonomous platforms. That's one thing we could consider a NERC report. Recent NERC report recommended doubling the support for autonomous platforms every 5 years. And so that's an interesting feature to consider if we're considering investing in that the next job for the fleet improvement committee is finding the right or the main job of the fleet improvement committee is finding the right composition of research vessels. And as Rose mentioned, the global class research vessels are currently oversubscribed. We have a backlog of cruises and it's not shrinking. And our coastal and local class vessels are under subscribed. And so the questions are right now are, you know, what's the right make up for the future? Do we need more global class research vessels? Do we need different sized vessels? Do the global class research vessels need to be potentially bigger? Some of this is due our current condition right now is somewhat due to the fact that we replace two global class research vessels, the nor and the Melville with ocean class research vessels. All right, which were a reduction in births and capability. The next thing is polar research. Polar research is becoming more and more important as the focus on climate change. There are plans for an Antarctic research vessel which are currently unfunded. This Antarctic research vessel would be a replacement for the Nathaniel be Palmer and the US Coast Guard is currently taking input from Unals on an Arctic surface capability. And they're specifically asking for science mission requirements from us, which is the sort of the first step in planning research vessels. And these would be polar capable ice breaking cutters. None of this will happen without the input of the community. And the last thing is the greening of the fleet. There's an executive order that requires net zero emissions from the overall federal operations by 2050, including a 65% reduction in emissions by 2030. So this is a pretty big ask for the academic research fleet currently. Next slide please. All right, here are the start facts. This is a table that takes us out into the future to 2035. And this is what the fleet will look like. The summary of this is in from 20 to 25 to 2035. We'll see the academic research fleet shrink from 18 to 10 vessels. And 13 to 8 operating institutions. The 3 globals. The the Atlantis, the rebel and the Tommy Thompson will end their design life and enter their extended life. Which is Rob mentioned will require investments. And the academic research fleet will see the retirement of all the intermediate coastal and local vessels. All right, that's the summary from the thick. Excellent. Okay, so I'm going to go over these really quick and some of them I won't mention at all so next slide, because they're they're just building off. You know, so some, some suggestions we'd love to be included in the plan and yet Doug you can go. You can put them all up back. Okay, you know we mentioned killing one I shouldn't be replaced if so with what we just heard about the ocean and global class capacity again and again like what's going to fill the vacuum with that. One point I want to make about the coastal and local class as a researcher that has worked in both blue water and the coastal zone. There's a bit of a scarcity mentality with a number of coastal researchers they don't ask for you know ships they worry that it's going to make their proposals too expensive. So is this a problem in that there's they're getting all the work that they need to get done with the ships that their institute or the boats that their local institution is running, or are we do we have blinders on some of these scientists and they're not asking for what they really need because I don't think they're going to get it. And I'm not convinced about that. I also wanted to point out that these vessels are very valuable for training. It's not that worth the cost but something to throw in next, you can put up the next budgets. One question about the autonomous tools that we've talked about it you know, do we need a national strategy around this, you know they are becoming as valuable as ships in many cases and so. But right now they're more discrete groups that are using them do we need to how do we make them are accessible to researchers across. I'm going to toss out a phrase that came to my mind when I got involved in you know, we've got great things out there in the fleet right we've got Alvin we've got sentry we've got. Oh shoot Jason, but I will say that I was like is that still all we've got there are great vessels but are there things coming down the pike at NSF being developed that I don't know about. Otherwise why not, and I don't know if I just pissed off Peter Gurgis or if he's like go girl I don't know I should have probably asked Peter about this. The the carbon at zero you've heard you know we're it's 2024 and we were supposed to do this by 2025 and I'm going to push back on Mark Abbott 10 years isn't long enough for a plan. When you're talking about ships we're way behind the eight ball. And you've heard about cybersecurity so go to the next. And I want to make the case we you know Rob mentioned that the Navy has a plan, I want to make a case that we need really a bold new vision for the academic research fleet and the funds to implement it. Right, and this is beyond the scope of a decadal survey but the decadal survey could recommend that this be done, because what we need is the science of the future intimately linked to the fleet and the infrastructure that we need in the future and right now we don't, we don't have that. And I think we need to desperately engage the next generation in developing this. And I'll tell you why I think the greatest threat to oceanography right now in terms of infrastructure is not the fact that we might be down to eight ships. It's that next slide please. We've become a community that is starting to dream small. Right, we're starting to again these blinders that we seem to have accumulated in the community I'm going to give you a brief. I just met from my first meeting with the fleet improvement committee, I was just sitting in trying to get up to speed on what they're talking about and they're talking about the next global, and it was one of the most depressing conversations I've sat through, because everything that seemed to be brought up about about some capability or some capacity that needed to be on the ship. And then there was instantly a response of we can't afford that we'll never get that approved that'll never get through.  At the end of that meeting, I asked if some people could stick around and talk to me and just help again help me get up to speed. And then the quote that is burned into my brain stem from one person is Debbie. If you want a state of the art research vessel, go to China. Again, when did when did we become that country. So I think engaging the younger generations thinking really boldly about the fleet that we need is important not just for the fleet itself. It's how we again start thinking as a community that we're a country that can do anything. And the facts the last slide. And I'll just leave it up there. You know, the fact we just launched pace $964 million. NASA launched pace. billion are a country that can do anything. And we need to start being really bold in the request that we need for ocean science because it is important, critically important to this country and to humanity, and we're not bold enough. We talked too much about what we can't do and I think we need to knock that off. So with that. Yeah, thank you. That's a very challenging statement and I appreciate that Debbie. I had to quite two quick questions before we go on to the other list one. I'm not sure who will answer this I guess maybe Rose with the first one or maybe. Well, anyway, I'm not sure but what's up with seismic one rumor is is that Lancet will go out of service around 2026 and is there are thoughts about a replacement for seismic ship. And second of all, I also heard a rumor that rumor from somewhere and I don't remember where that there is a some sort of a plan to build a new Jason it would be somewhat less capable but still very capable, or the deep submergence facility. Anybody have thoughts on those two seismic and new Jason. I can I can talk about seismic Columbia has been working on a plan and doing a lot of background work for a training and another vessel and converting it to be a seismic vessel. To do a lot of the site and the capabilities of Lancet, even at the full suite of them, and also do a better job with general ocean graphic support as well. So that way it's better utilized, but they are even actively working on it. We don't know all the, we don't know all the insights in behind the doors what's happening, but that's sort of plan is actually to obtain a vessel converted and put into service as the Lancet has retired in 2026 timeframe maybe if they can. This is not a quick easy process but that's what they've been actually working on. That's agreed a number of times to the marine seismic research operations. Rose, I don't even talk about another Jason Jason light or something. Well I was going to ask Jim since he's in the room to talk about that but there has been talk about having some kind of second Jason, and I don't know where it's at in the planning or funding stage. Rose, do you want me to say anything about that. I'm sure Brian's on there perfect. Morning everybody. Nice to see you all. Regarding a mid scale and mid medium class ROV there's been a lot of interest in the community about relieving the bottleneck of Jason and also standing up a capability that could work from ships other than global ocean class. And that is to design and construct an ROV or more that would be compatible with the RC RVs, frankly, and other ships of that class. So, while there is no, you know, funding available to do that, the Deep Submerge and Science Committee did produce a position about that need. And it's been, you know, broadly acknowledged and accepted and I've, you know, I've even discussed it a bit with Noah about their interests. I'd like to add a comment to that. So, when Doug showed the complex slide on scheduling. One of the things that's not hidden that's hidden in that slide is the vehicles. So there's only one Alvin and many of the vehicles being soul sourced and drive the schedule. So, right now our schedule limitations are often more impacted by the availability of the vehicles than the ships themselves. Okay, I think we'll move to the questions that are on on the list here. The first one I see is from Layla that has a lot of support. Do you want to ask your question Layla. Yeah. So thanks first to the panelists for all of your perspectives. This has been really informative. We actually asked part of my question and the comments in the context of the local and the coastal vessels and the committee is interested in connecting the appetite for ship support with the menu of offerings and and understanding if that current menu or the future projected menu is not meeting the need where we'd like to know what's also on the hidden chefs menu. I think I'm hungry. And so, and that might also show us some some things in regional science drivers. And we wonder if NSF or you know, some data they can share on investments in ship time on non academic research fleet vessels, maybe through rapid funding, maybe through other mechanisms where a non ARF vessel has to be used to support an NSF science initiative. This is kept. You know, you know, I don't think we have that type of information. You know, it's possible NSF might just from the expenditures and where they go but that's a pretty deep dive in terms of finding that out. You know the whole way of trying to approach that might be reaching out to the oceanographic community via a survey or something like that. Make a quick comment. Sure. So not specific to the vessels but to the vehicles I can't recall a year in the recent past where I didn't rent a third party ROV at least once or more times per year. So I was just going to make two observations on that. I mean, obviously, the file core to does carry out a lot of NSF supported science. So that's going to a ship outside the ARF. As far as the smaller ships. That's something that could potentially be collected through the NSF award systems but it would take some time, but they, but we do ask that they meet the unit safety standards and so there's a whole process for using non ARF ships. So, hopefully through that engagement there would be some kind of idea of how often this happens. Okay, well let's see move on the other one I see next on the list is from Dipanjana Dipanjana. Yes. Go ahead and ask your question. Thank you. It is really great to know about the air please the services provided by the air please and also the challenges. I was just wondering that as the price of the vessels and the fuel to run a vessel is always a constraint. What are the options to use hydrogen or any other clean alternatives to run these ships in an energy efficient manner, but of course without compromising the research objectives or the safety. Thank you. Does Vick want to ask for that? Yeah. So, that's a great question. Alternative fuels and the like. That is definitely under consideration right now. Scripps institution of oceanography is spearheading an effort to design a coastal research vessel that is partially run on hydrogen so that is there is an attention being given to that it's a challenging. It's a it's a challenge to have a platform that's propelled by hydrogen and can still complete the research missions. I can add to that as well the part of the problem is this being a source that kind of the quantities we need, especially for our global ships that travel the world. So you can't get the alternative fuels. The infrastructure is not caught up to where the world is gone yet. So that's it is a challenge. And also you cannot convert these ships quickly to move into alternative fuels you have to basically design for the ground up because the time it is where you differently in all the other infrastructure controls and all that it's not easily possible for the ships we have. Yeah, I think just just a quick comment that there is a lot of research on on on acquiring large amounts of hydrogen. It's something for the future but it's something to think about and I'm really happy that Scripps is least going to try something on today's scale but in the future maybe it's it'll be more, it'll be putting more possible. I was asked about nuclear in the chat. The US is really good at nuclear ships. I was made to a Navy nuke. Yeah. That's true. I, I can tackle that question. I'm a nuclear trained naval officer. Crew size that comes with adding nuclear power is an additional expense. It's probably if it would be considered it would be considered in the Arctic, where the advantage of having nuclear propulsion is reasonable. There are other nuclear powered oceanographic research ships in other countries. The US just has not gone down that particular path. Okay, a jeet. I think I see you next on the question list. I just, and I'll go back to Peter after a jeet. Thanks. For me, I was just curious in terms of what how we are writing the report if examples can be provided of how the new RCRE is supporting the science of the next decade. Just examples of things like for my own personal thing, it's like, are they capable of launching. Just examples of things like that. I think Brian. All the ships in the fleet are capable of launching AVs and the RC RVs will be supporting the science in the next decade because those are the ships will have. Starting their, their service life right at the beginning of. The decade you're considering 2025. I was just into the type of growth. Many of the ships right now can support aerial operations. That's a, you know, we didn't touch on that, but. Autonomous aerial operations are a part of the academic research fleet. There's a committee at Unals called score. Which is solely well, which is focused on that in addition to. Human occupied aerial measurements. But at some point we can talk about what the RC are you bring in terms of their sea keeping efficiency and dynamic positioning data presence. I mean, those are all the things that the RC are these spring. I think that are going to be quite enabling for the research community. I'm happy to provide it with you on that. And we're specifically designed for from day one. Very science board design. And their regional class vessels, which put them in a particular size class, which, you know, that establishes sort of their capabilities, what sort of sees they can operate in how many. Scientists, they can carry, which is not the same as, for example, the global class research vessels, which have the broadest range of sea. Keep keeping capabilities and the largest science births. I don't mean to butt in, but you guys are taking on the thing I think about every day. So, a GT to your question. Nice to see you by the way. The RC RVs are will be certainly capable of launching autonomous and other systems aerial surface submarine. And we, as to have pointed out, are specifically designed to well support that activity. We're going to add, you know, advanced usbl capability day to every vessel, as well as station keeping that's that's far improved over over the ships they're replacing. Very similar capabilities to the global and ocean class systems with the limitations that that kept mentioned that, I mean, I think regional classes and misnomer at this point, they've been expanded to larger than our intermediate class, but you know, that's semantics will still be somewhat birthing limited a little bit duration and range limited it compared to an ocean class ship. Okay, let's Peter Peter Gurus. You had a question. Yeah, thank you all.  I know how much work you all do to support science. So thank you. And, and thanks to the program officers.  Um, you know, why don't we acknowledge Rose comments about just being vessels to comply with NSF, you know, sort of safety policies and all the other practices. I mean, that is that is really important. I also, I just having worked with Schmidt Ocean Institute and other entities and trying to bring together NSF dollars and Schmidt resources. It works, but it's all very ad hoc and you know, when we look at where the US academic research fleet goes, it's pretty biased towards the North Atlantic and some work in the city. And if we want to do global research, either we need a bunch more or we need to be really smart about partnerships. And I would, I would love to hear more about examples of partnerships that maybe I'm unaware of that exist between NSF and other agencies in the, in the, in the southern hemisphere around the world that might allow us to have our US scientists to have access to the global ocean. Thank you. So, let me start off with just saying that, you know, Schmidt is always invited and comes to our Unals meetings and we kind of feel like they're kind of an ancillary part of the fleet, so to speak. We have, as I mentioned the barters that we have with NERC, and that's kind of the idea that we're looking at is how can we more efficiently use ships that are in different regions because we have these requirements for OOI. We have, you know, the OOI, the bats, the hot cruises, we have all these requirements that keep ships in certain basins. So, it, I think it is important to think more strategically about other opportunities. We're trying to do this barter right now with NOAA so that we can exchange ship time with them without having exchanged dollars. So, yes, I think that there is an opportunity to look up beyond the ARF for partnerships. Thank you. Okay, Allison, you had a question. A couple of them. Yeah, I do have a couple of questions, but I guess I'll start with the one that's by a spring. You showed some data of where all the vessels have been. And this ties into Keith's question a little bit, but do you have data not just on where the ship has been and operated, but where the scientists on board are coming from? And I guess what I'm getting at is, for example, the regional class vessel operated by URI mostly utilized by scientists that might live in New England. And what's the institutional diversity look like also? Not all our data is good because it depends on what the operators have printed from your when you collected the data for the participants during the cruises. So that we can gather it so I can't promise to be really accurate. Unfortunately, because we've had working on making more standardized and so that through the marine facilities planning application we use now and scheduling. We've incorporated a cruise planning process through that and that is now becoming more standardized and how people collect all that information. I can't really give you quite without doing some digging about where did all this and correlate to each ship. That's a big lift of data work. If that's what they need, we can work and figure out how to do that, especially the data we have. Do you have any like this anecdotal evidence or like you used idea if that is the case where the regional vessel kind of being more utilized by regional scientists? I would say, well, actually I would say there's pretty good diversity. I mean, I've given the example is this like there's been scientists that have used the link explorer that come all over the place. You know, and they take advantage of France to do something from the mainland back to your mood for me to do their work. When I managed the barns and then the Carson in Seattle, we had scientists more of the place come and use it in the ship. There's a lot of scientific questions sitting somewhere else in the country and you've got people come across the country to use this little ship to actually answer the questions. So I think there's actually quite a very good diversity. It's not just biased towards that local institution. Okay. Mark, Mark Abbott, do you have a question? Sure, just trying to hit all the unmute buttons. Yeah, it's actually comes out of a report from years ago back and when the consortium for ocean leadership actually existed, which is we need to really think about a portfolio approach of acquisition, you know, leasing to government to build on, et cetera. We need to think about mechanisms to manage the funding so it's a bit more predictable than it is right now. And more importantly, a governance strategy for the agencies that really formulates formalizes their roles and responsibilities because right now it's very ad hoc. I mean, I agree with Debbie on the blue sky approach, but we've got to come up with approaches that manage what are looking like very plausible scenarios. I mean, all the scenarios we proposed over the last or saw over the last 10 to 20 years, a compression of the fleet, et cetera, are really coming to pass. I'll put words in Rob Spurrick's mouth, but I don't see the Navy being able to play a very big role anymore in the next 10 years. They've got the great ship problem. We can't count on NSF to come up with the $1 to $2 billion worth of ship costs. So we've got to come up with some strategies that really enable the science we need to do. I don't think that means a necessary retreat, but it means a lot more creative and out of the box thinking of NSF, go out and come up with the requirements, Navy, you go build a big ship. That's been our model. And I think we've got to think really differently. So I'm curious what the community, what the group is thinking on those lines. Stop there. You have ideas, Mark, just to turn your question back around to you. Well, I think the decadal survey of ships is one part. I think we've got to start thinking about lease leasing ships. I think I've seen a lot of questions about relying on some more private operators. I think even things about, even on the globals, how can we increase their physical footprint? You know, right now, everybody wants to be on them, but you're still limited on how many things you can put in the water at once. So a lot of time, people are sitting around waiting for wire time. So are there strategies that kept sort of alluded to it of using autonomous platforms to physically increase the effectiveness of the ships we have. Maybe even some of the smaller ships. But I think right now we've got to come up with a governance structure that involves the agencies and the community that really constantly is looking at this portfolio of approaches. And thinking just differently than what we've done in the past. I have a comment on that. I would encourage you to take a look at the National Oceanographic Partnership Language. You'll find congressional intent. I think you will find that the partnership while long standing possibly could be improved and codified some of the things that you're asking. I would say yes, you caught one of my hidden messages when I suggested the CBO report is what views the Navy Shipbuilding Plan. The CBO would say the Navy Shipbuilding Plan, which doesn't include research vessels isn't affordable. So the Navy already has an unaffordable plan that doesn't include research vessels. Can I comment, Jim, on that? Sure, go ahead. I think one of the things we're seeing right now is the impact of a lack of coordinated advocacy for ocean research in general. The Consortium of Ocean Leadership, many of the people on the call were involved in that and I mean that was, what, seven, eight years of just trying to keep it afloat. And now it's gone. Everybody's kind of scrambling. And so we don't have anyone in Washington as a community leader right now that is really trying to make the case for large investments. So we could look to, you know, the coordinated communities like astronomy that is very effective at using decadal surveys and then advocacy with Congress to get what we need, what they need. And I think we could learn something from that. There is a gathering at Ocean Science next week on Wednesday at 1245 to talk about ocean advocacy. So join us if you're going to be there. I'm glad to do that on a decadal survey testimony call. Out of order. Let's see. We have here marks. Well, Allison, you had another question about. Let's see. Yeah, did you get to that one about building a new ship from scratch. And also, that's a more general thing. Are there other agencies like no. Certainly in a ship build that we could tag on to is anyone have a comment on that that to do something to replace the upcoming retirements. Yes, the existing Noah class B vessels which started contract about four months ago is for a to ship build with two options that cost about $150 million and could be exercised in the next 46. Or 72 months, if my math is right. Or be lost. Is that an option to replace kilo, for example. It's a potential option for acquiring additional vessels should Congress feel the need to replace kilo Moana. I tried to hedge my answer on that, but yes, it's an option. And, but just to clarify that Noah variant is the Armstrong class, basically, and then they, they took that design. Or not yet. The astronaut class. Which, which might be a suitable replacement for the one. But the, I think the key point of of Rob's, well, my interpretation of what Rob said is that there's an opportunity there. But nothing can happen without the dollars being appropriated to capitalize on that opportunity. And that requires the community's advocacy, like Debbie pointed out. I think that two of our major ships in the last couple of decades are named after astronauts shows how bad we are at advocating for ourselves. If you go back real quickly to my original question, I asked this because I don't know, but did you know slash NSF class to build a new ship from last, or is more than you could fire and old oil and gap vessel for example and then fit it into a research stuff, which seems like it could be more cost effective and not take it home. I can, I can touch on that. So it's, it's a complex question. I mean, because you can look at ships and you know was there's a ship and it's looks like it would be rearranged but then they start digging into it.  Oh, by the way, the code is changed. And now you just deal with all that. So at the end of the day, you know all the design work, all the conversion work, you may have spent this as much of that work or newer and may not get done much faster. Believe it or not. I know it doesn't seem like he does the ship, when it cut it up makes some changes and put it in there but we have very complex ships. It's one of the most complex ships in the world, because of all the scientific data systems and all the instrumentation plan. By the time you add all that into a ship, you really modify it tremendously. It works in certain situations and that's, that's what Columbia is trying to do. They have found some potential relatively new ships, not small throwaways by the way. So you're not dealing with the rebuilding your old New Orleans house. It's got to turn like the image behind it. They think they've got found some that could work, but it'll still be 150 million dollars to do that. And that would be focused for a few things, not like general oceanographic what we tend to do. What we want, like I always describe as net one chip you pick up and do anything that, you know, in your neighbor can borrow and use it for anything. That's the beauty of our ships because it can support, you know, do physical research, physical oceanography research, the integrated combinations of all these. That's why our ships are where they are. So it can be done because you have compromises. Yeah, I mean, I'm familiar with the process approach. I just didn't know if there was like a rule that that can be done. No, there's no rule that you can't be done. I was done with like Seth, for example. I'll be out real quickly. Most of the lovely ships are foreign ships. And then a set that no one can not spend that kind of money to acquire a foreign ship. I mean, the reason why like, I'll give you the university of Washington, we don't want to buy things in England bought a ship bought it back, and it's in conversion work. Because that was specifically in portion of graph research about what kind of funds and not with public money. Certainly the National Science Foundation and the Navy are not going to commit money overseas. Congress is not going to allow them to do that. They do that very successfully. Yeah, it was a lot of money to convert. But yes, I think they made they bought the Lancet for less than they sold the. You and for you were sort of run out of time and this has been a really interesting session I appreciate the speakers the participants the questioners and it was a bladder buster so maybe we need a break. Thank you, Jim. And we're going to take a 15 minute break at this point and then that way we'll be back on schedule. And I'm trying to make sure that I know you all have accused me of cutting your break short so I'm trying to make sure we keep the lunch hour full hour, so that everyone has an opportunity to interact with them informally. So let's get back to 1045. Thank you. I was going to make it away. Okay. All right, everyone, we're going to get started on the next session. This is a session on public private partnerships and ocean science. This session is geared to developing information on successes, lessons learned and future opportunities for NSF to advance their mission and goals through public private partnerships. We have four speakers in this session three or online and one of them is in person, and we will get started off with Dr. Henry Jones. He's the director of research development and scientific enterprise at the University of Southern Mississippi. We will share some lessons learned on the development of a data assembly for 100 systems. Great. So I'm sure you've already been welcome to do this city and to Southern Miss so I'm going to do that yet again really glad that you're here. Thanks for letting me be a part like everyone in this room and align my fear has taken me in all sorts of different places, but one common theme is some different elements of public private partnerships from the very first company I started about 25 years ago. That was the collaboration between the government and academic partner and my small company on to most recently the project that I run here at Southern Miss. As Layla described when we were building a data assembly of improved systems. So, you know it's tough for anybody, especially in academia don't talk for 10 minutes. I was given four possible things to talk about. And what I'm going to try to do is put about two minutes into each. This is where they sort of give some summaries based on the experiences that I've had so far with different implementations of public private partnerships. So one thing is a model that I think about frequently for how to think about the relationships between government and academia and industry in particular small business. The gears of the machinery of government such as it is, it's just enormous with lots of inertia for good and for not so good. And lots of things can be generated, it can be lots of energy through participation by the government, but for industry and especially for small businesses, it can absolutely just decimate that small little gear represented by a small company of just a few people when you're trying to work with the government. So what I have observed is that academia can be a really excellent transmission between those two parts and that can manifest itself in many different ways. One example, the next one is this data assembly that I'm going to be principal investigator for. So the way that this came about is a good example. Southern Miss had a good relationship with NOAA and NCI is it's, you know, probably speaking the archive. And we were just in discussions with them because they have relationships with them and they were describing this really difficult new problem ahead for them which was a lot of video streaming in. Video reference, not a lot of standards and not really sure how to handle both processing it in real time, but then also making it available in the long term. So this was a, this is a very difficult problem. And what's also good is that USM had a relationship separately with Hyperion, which is a business that is a DOD contractor doing and working this problem. So what USM could do is connect NOAA to Hyperion and to entities that really would have not known to connect and would not have known how to connect. And so the initial step was for Southern Miss to be the connect door to just see if we could work that problem together. And then what it has turned into, thankfully, is executing a solution to this problem where, again, it would have been difficult for Hyperion who used to work with the Defense Department to know how to another small company to know how to navigate NOAA. And it would have been difficult for NOAA to know how to work with the government owned software that was available to them that Hyperion was aware of. And I think the same construct over and over where academia is really an excellent transmission point for connecting the big years of government and the small rapidly spinning gears of industry. So on the topic of how to maximize their use and research impact, I come from an entrepreneurial background. One thing that I believe is worth pointing out is that commercial entities start first with the customer. And this is not some alchemy that is difficult to figure out how to do. This is something that still can badly make sure it is done first because if you do not figure out where the customers are coming from with the market as you do that first, the commercial entity that starts to figure that out last, you won't be a commercial entity for long. And so what they have done is developed many tools on the screen here. I have the Getting Jobs Done Canvas, the Lean Startup Canvas, the Diet Proposition Canvas, a few concepts that are well known and understood in the commercial industry. I teach a class at Southern Miss for using us in the context of the Defense Department. And my perception is that we could see a lot better data use and research impact to the extent that we can include these tools up front in the conversations as opposed to at the end. The Get Up does have its iCore program. It's these exact tools and campuses and so forth that tends to come at the end when you are trying to find out how to commercialize a product. My experience has been that the best way if you want to make the largest impact is to try to include these tools up front. And that is that in part it's because there are often a lot of things that are required to make something thrive once it is created as opposed to it doesn't exist. That is the typical, if you're going to blind spot or the gap to close between the conversations that I've had someone in industry compared to somebody who's just funding the initial research from, especially from government and sometimes from is it's not just enough to make the things you've got to make the thing be able to thrive in the marketplace of some sort so that it will endure and not just be. And, you know, there's a list here of some of those things that are not taken into account that if they are, they are all things that can be accountable. And when they are, they can result in a system that can thrive, whether it's a product or a service. So, we've now we're through those four topics from the beginning. I want to bring up a really big challenge ahead. I think everybody's generally aware of this, but I have seen this firsthand. I saw this firsthand when I was working with the Defense Department to handle these streams of video data. I also, I found it and ran a quantitative hedge fund. So I saw what sort of appetites automated algorithms can have for data. AI algorithms, I say here, they are relentless data consumers. We generally speaking have had as a cap on our desire for throughput from data are individual ranks. There's only so much that one researcher can really try to assess through. If you properly construct an AI algorithm, it will demand as much data as it as resources will. Whatever the resource constraint is, it will maximize that resource constraint and when that constraint is eliminated, it will just maximize until it finds the next constraint. So, that's what I mean here when it slowly stresses the infrastructure lead points. If you are building out something, and it's got everything this regards to AI needs storage and compute and network capability to connect all of that. The algorithms will max out one of those three, and you'll be pressed to increase it and it will max out that resource or one of the other ones, and so forth. And that's the reality of when you have these sorts of algorithms implemented and, you know, especially in systems that can be accessed by a broad variety of people compared to just some internally, you know, when you're opening it up to the public. So, in our project that we are currently doing for knowing the archive, we recognize this sort of demand cannot be free. So, one way to accommodate these sorts of demands is to from the beginning, but in place the infrastructure to get some sort of financial compensation. But that's not always the most appropriate or, you know, sometimes for policy reasons or for the customers that you want support on have the finances to adequately compensate for that. The resources. So what you can do as an alternative is to require that they submit their results back into the system for other people to use. And I think this is a really important insight is that these relentlessly consuming algorithms are also the most productive things that you can imagine. And if we can get their results to be inserted back into the set of data that is subsequently available for other researchers, it is a very, very powerful feedback mechanism. And I've seen that firsthand and I'm excited about what we can do for NOAA when we implement this for them as well. And it's something that I can talk about at length because it is so exciting what you can do when you implement this sort of positive feedback that's automated. And then the final topic is I was asked what what have you seen that was really a big deal that really made a big impact. So, with regards to data, some of you may be aware of the spare policies for May 4 for good data stewardship. Findable accessible interoperable and reasonable fair fair standards and so forth. It's a really good concept. It has not percolated into operations all that much. I have seen in some of my past endeavors that what really makes things happen is creating a school. And as I know here there is a reason why everywhere you love their, their stars, some of the thumb, some of the lights and all this sort of thing. It is because simple metrics thoroughly drive producer and consumer behavior. Stars are a, you know, they seem to work. So, we're starting with stars in our system. When data is pulled in, data is ready to be shared. We have a very simple at this point rubric for giving a fair metric. We are not the fair experts. We don't want to be the fair experts. We are putting in place the ability to score based on parents and then to publicize that so that it can drive both the behavior of the producers of the data, make their data fair, and for the consumers of the data to highlight, emphasize and utilize that because it's been very clear to them that this is the most fair data, the first data of them all. That's, that's it for me. So we'll hold the questions to the end with all of the panelists. So our next two panelists are joining us online and both are presentations from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. And Karen Grissom, Deputy Division Chief of NCEI, Postal Medicine and Geophysics section and Tim Boyer, oceanographer at NCEI will be talking about strengthening partnerships through the Blue Economy Services and products. And I'm not sure which is going first. I think Karen. Yep, I got a thumbs up. Okay. Can everyone hear me? All right. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Hello. My name is Karen Grissom and I'm very new with NCEI. I just joined the organization three weeks ago. So Tim is the expert regarding the organization, but I'll try and help you learn what we do a little bit. So today I'm here to speak with you regarding the public-private partnerships, specifically the Blue Economy, with a focus on unmanned systems. And I would like to thank my contributors, Jennifer Bowers, Carrie Wall, and Sharon Masick, without their help, because I'm such a newbie to the organization. This presentation will not be brought to you. Next, please. Okay. So just a very high-level overview of what NCEI is and its value to the nation. A lot of you are aware of the data stewardship that NCEI provides. We provide the archives for ocean atmospheric data from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun. And we also provide a range of products from hourly to decadal timescales and cover local to geographic locations. The expertise that we have in-house, we have two science divisions and three support divisions, two support divisions, and the data stewardship division, of which is the archive, which most of you are familiar with. But we have a plethora of expertise from geophysicists, marine geologists, to space weather scientists, to climate scientists, people that focus in paleo, climatology, aerosols, coastal inundation, a lot of expertise within house. And moving on the far right of this graph, you'll see a pie chart that shows you our stakeholders by section. And one thing that you'll note is that the bulk of our stakeholders are external to the NOAA enterprise, which means that we have a lot of stakeholders in the ecosystem, agriculture, agriculture, transportation, insurance is a big one, education and emergency management. So we produce a lot of higher order products that benefit these stakeholders. Next, please. Karen, just a quick note, we're not able to advance your slides right now. I just wanted to let you know that the room can't see your slides at this moment. Oh, you can? Okay. Would you like me to share my screen? I actually think we have it. If you're looking online, you're okay. My apologies. Okay, so we're all good, Karen, go ahead. Okay, okay. Next, thank you. Okay, so a lot of you have heard the new blue economy. So the question is, is what is new and what is blue about it? The ocean economy we're all aware of is comprised of navigation, exploitation of those natural resources, tourism is another activity, fishing, et cetera. There's a lot of things that go into the existing ocean economy and what makes it new and blue is that what we're trying to do is we're trying to focus on economic growth within that sector, but also have components of social inclusion and make sure that it's sustainable and that it improves the livelihood of people around us. So as far as how this will benefit the public-private partnership is it's an intersection of technology, data, and information are coming together to catalyze this. And what are the benefits of that? How does that play out? We'll see that in the next slide. Okay, thank you. So the new blue economy was founded on capabilities of acquiring data and developing information that will enable the nation to spur responsible long-term economic growth while the idea is protecting ocean health, human health, and ensuring social equity. And here what you can see is we have three areas. It's three legs of the stool per se. It's propping up ocean health because we want to make sure that it is a sustainable development of the new blue economy. And the three areas are research or science, policy, that's all that's how we can inform decisions of management, resource management, and venture-based, there we go, venture-based innovation. So the venture-based innovation is where we are focusing today. And those are innovation workforce and application. In the innovation, we're focusing on areas like we want to increase our coastal observations for a variety of applications. We want to make sure that all this data is accessible and available to the public. As Henry mentioned in his previous talk, he brought up the fair principles of data management. We definitely want to follow that. Another thing is this can't happen in a vacuum. We need to make sure that we're adequately engaging with the stakeholders and the public out there so that we need to know that what we're doing is benefiting the economy. And we are spurring innovation and increasing that public-private partnership. Lastly, a lot of this is based on a foundation of research and experimentation. But none of this can happen without the workforce. So that's one of the big roles of the new blue economy is developing a workforce that is able to support this new blue economy. Which means that we will need data managers. We'll need computer scientists. We're going to need people who have expertise in cloud computing. We're going to need a whole slew of scientists. We're going to need pilots for unmanned systems. We're going to need manufacturing sector. It's almost endless the applications as far as how the workforce expansion can grow. And of course it is just going to depend upon how we manage the resources of the new blue economy. And lastly, all of this needs to come together. The science and the research come together and influence our policy on how we're managing it. Next. Okay. So the case studies I wanted to focus on is looking at unmanned systems. And here's the region of where we're kind of forming this nexus for unmanned systems. And you'll see that there's a lot of activity going on here in the Gulf of Mexico, the northern Gulf of Mexico around unmanned systems. We have an innovation district that's located in Gulfport. We have USM campuses. We have Stennis. And of course there is also laboratories. There is a number of unmanned systems and that are being developed here along the coast. Along with a lot of data processing and coastal data management capabilities. Next. So who are the players? These are some of the players that are active here in the Gulf. Inside the circles, those are the dashed line. Those are the current players that are active in that Gulf, the Gulfport Innovation Center and are spearheading a lot of these efforts in the northern Gulf of Mexico. And the logos that intersect with the dashed lines are part of a current cohort pilot project for Vincent to fund six venture capitalist companies in Blue Economy developed. And it has to do with technology develop of unmanned systems. And further out, we move more away from the local area. We move into companies that are already existing in this uncrewed arena and are established and are competing. Next. Okay, so what are we doing here? We're building a regional Blue Economy Nexus per se. In this area, it's not so much that it's an application, but it's trying to build the workforce. USM has a training program going on for unmanned systems. I believe it's the first of its kind in the nation. And we're building partnerships to develop the capability to increase the collection of observations for more environmental observations for longer times and in harsher conditions. Areas where it's too difficult to send a ship out or too costly to send a ship out. And of course, we're promoting data driven decisions to foster that innovation. Some of the benefits to stakeholders and when I say stakeholders, this is the public. This is, these are the technology companies. These are researchers, scientists, resource managers are the data to support decision making in public interest. For instance, we can provide data on sectors from pipelines to wind farms, fisheries, weather, and just any kind of plain exploration. For example, South Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, the charts for NOAA producers are very valuable to the commercial and recreational fisheries and aquaculture sector. And as you'll note in the middle image that red unmanned system, they're utilizing unmanned systems currently for doing that kind of mapping for charts. Another is the data is open to the public. NCEI takes this data in and also refines it and makes more advanced products. As I mentioned previously, when I was speaking to that stakeholder sector to make it available so that decisions can be made on this. One example is the world ocean database of which my colleague Tim will be speaking to in the next presentation. Another is to promote workforce development and technology. The whole idea is to bring jobs to the local and regional area through this regional nexus and unmanned systems. And out of all these benefits, it creates some opportunities that we can look to the future to expand this. And some of those are the technology development and transition going from research to operations. That seems like a pretty straightforward area, but it's actually quite complicated to take it from the research to operations. So there are some areas where we need to focus there. We also, as I mentioned, the workforce development, we have a need for pilots and drone operators. We also have a large need for data managers to people that have experience in managing large sets of data, writing computer code, and particularly with migration to the cloud and AI ML learning. We also have, there's an opportunity for rapidly advancing data science skills, and that is something that I'll speak to more on one of the insides next. So expanding this unmanned system test case, we could take it from a regional nexus where we're developing capabilities in this region to a national application. And one of the national applications for unmanned systems is using it for fisheries monitoring to make informed decisions and data driven decisions on things such as stock assessments. This application is scalable. It allows us to go from a local to regional to, excuse me, regional to national to global scale. We can also monitor habitats and water quality. Water quality that we're looking at monitoring with unmanned systems is a whole slew of things that are costly and expensive to do if we put out a buoy or have to go out there manually sample. We can cover a lot larger areas and that would be water quality, sea surface temperature, salinity, DO, these are dissolved oxygen concentrations, a whole slew of things that it makes it easier to do with an unmanned system than if we were to do manually sampling. Another thing is we can minimize our interaction with protective species. Turtles is a fun example through telemetry monitoring. So we're remotely monitoring them and we can telemetry that data, meaning it's transmitted to satellite and we wouldn't have to have a direct interaction with that species. We could do that through use of passive and active acoustics. And lastly, this all comes together and it's going to help us with to assess population size and determine prey abundance. The good example of that are the rice wells. So that's a good application for that. Over this will support different stock assessments such as HAKE in the West Coast, Atlanta Cod, here in the Gulf of Mexico, Snapper, Shrimp, Gruper, those are three examples of where we can apply this, this fleet of unmanned system technology to manage our fisheries. So what are some of the benefits of this? I would say some of the benefits of this are we do get this increased in this exponential increase in data collected signals in regional water. So it's going to allow us to have a better indication of what the ecosystem is and what kind of stocks it will support. As I mentioned, we could do the water quality mapping. So that's going to couple with use that for determining what kind of conditions will support. Another thing is the expansion of workforce. I think I mentioned that before on the regional. This is something that I cannot stress enough that this is a new area, a new emerging technology. It's been in the development stages for probably 10, 15 years, but that's relatively new as far as earth system monitoring. And so we really need to develop a workforce that has experience in piloting these unmanned systems, monitoring the data, processing the data, writing code for it. There's a never ending need there. Along, of course, we need oceanographers to look at the data and tell us what's going on, biologists, fisheries, fisheries specialists. There's a lot of need for workforce development there. So some of the facts about fisheries that I thought were kind of interesting and this shows you the potential for the scalability goes back to our first benefit of scalable from a regional, national to a global. We had a seven people depend upon ocean as a primary source of protein. So that's a significant market sector per se, if you're going to look at it from an economic standpoint, 2.5 trillion annually. This is the ocean contributions to the economy and 600 million. That's the worldwide number of livelihoods that depend upon at least partially on fisheries and aquaculture. So that's a huge market sector at any company that's looking to expand in this can just look at these numbers and realize that there is a market sector out there. Next, next slide please. So another application is more has more of a global impact. I mentioned the fisheries on a national impact because fisheries are managed on on a national and a regional level. There's something that are exclusive to our EZ. Excuse me, my light just went out on a global impact. We can use unmanned systems to to have a discernible impact on monitoring marine weather observations. And an example of this would be disseminating data in real time from unmanned systems to the global community for numerical weather prediction and natural hazard detection. We work with our global partners at the World Meteorological Organization and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission and the International Hydrographic Organization to collect this data and make this data available in real time or near real time so that it can provide a benefit to numerical weather prediction centers globally all around the world. Some some benefits of collecting this kind of observations for marine weather include process studies process studies are the unmanned systems are ideal for process studies to inform the needs for a longer term observations. A good example would be measuring air or sea surface temperature to understand how the tropical Pacific impacts global weather as well as climate and how hurricanes form in the Genesis region of the eastern tropical Pacific. These would be ideal for that where you might not be able to sustain a long term observing system out there but you could send out an unmanned system. Another example that is benefits to stakeholders are data buys so we don't have to actually go out and build the infrastructure within NOAA or within NCI to do this we could buy the data from a commercial sector and provide that. It allows for more flexibility and it's also a shorter spend up time and versus developing the developing that capacity in house and another benefit from using unmanned systems for marine weather observations are they provide a rapid response capability. You can be at the right place at the right time a good example of this would be driving one of these into the center of the storm, which has been done previously. AOML one of the NOAA labs sent one into a hurricane I think it was a year or two ago and was able to collect observations within the within a hurricane and previous to that the possibility of a the probability that a hurricane is going to go over one of your observing assets in the ocean is very minimal in institute assets so here we have the capability of directing them to the storm versus. I'm waiting to see if the storm goes over the asset. Another unknown fact about these is that they're also they promote environmental sustainability of observing systems and methods, they have a lower impacts than a lot of the current than the institute current observing methods. The National Weather Service National Data Buoy Center recently replaced a mooring in the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary that was causing scouring to the benthic layer from its anchor with an unmanned system. And so there's no impact there it's a low impact in that area, and we still collect the data that is provided to the global marine weather infrastructure. So the opportunities what are their opportunities here for marine weather observations. We're living in a changing climate we know that there's a big market need for more observations of whether whether it's over the land or in the ocean. In order to do that we need to have technology innovation some of the limitations currently are the duration that these can go out the distance that they can go. How long they can be out in the water and of course the operating envelope some of them don't do so great in high currents or high wind conditions. So there's those type of things to consider and that's areas where public private partnership can intersect and stimulate technology in innovation. And once again is the inexperienced workforce there's very much a need this is the third time I've hit on this is the need for workforce development and capability in the unmanned systems area operators data managers people interpreting the data. So it's definitely an emerging workforce need. Some other opportunities are cost the cost of these can vary but some of them are actually quite cost effective and would in compared to a long term observing platform so that's something that as we develop them more ideally the cost would come down and then it would be rolled back into more. Private public partnerships we'd be able to put more money into the private sector as the cost comes down that that goes back to the data buys. Next slide please. I'm just going to say the last thing is data landscape. So the data landscape is changing and we need data managers because we're going to get a lot of data coming out of this. And the data from this is like I said from the regional to the global level. This is my last slide. Thank you. Thank you. Okay we'll move on to our picker is Tim Boyer. Thank you. I'm Tim Boyer. Karen's colleague at NCEI and I'll be expanding on some of the themes for the blue economy. I gave it a little different title to focus on those themes collaboration all along the instrument information chain as an oceanographer acutely aware that there are not enough measurements in the ocean that we don't have enough measurements. We don't have enough data to understand the ocean, not historically not presently. And when we do have data as we do have a lot more data than we had previously. It's a struggle to go from data to to actual information research or monitoring or or usable policy information or policy ready information I should say. So I'm going to that that that's this is a global task. It's not. And it's also a a task that can only be accomplished with public private partnerships. Next slide please. So, to drive that home this the UN decade of the ocean we are in the UN decade of the ocean for sustainable development. And I did finally get a communication from someone from the UN decade coordination office talking about public priva