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This grant was to support an symposium entitled “ Known unknowns and unknown knowns: Chemical Oceanography in a changing world”. The symposium was held at the Georgia Coastal Center in Savannah, Ga. February 22-24th, 2009. Eighty scientists, including 48 students and postdocs, met to present talks and posters and to discuss what challenges and needs are facing the filed of chemical oceanography in the new millennium. The three days were divided into an evening dinner, held at the Telfair Museum, presentation sessions, and poster sessions. Talks were divided up into 5 sessions, focusing on marine margins, biomarkers, proxies, carbon preservation, and global change. Presenters were encouraged to be provocative and speculative in their talks, and this generated lively discussion among the attendees after each talk.

Aside from this grant, additional funding was obtained from the National Science Foundation, the Geochemical Society, and the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography. These additional funds were used to provide international travel support, beverage and food for the opening dinner and poster sessions. SkIO also provided personnel to help with logistics, poster sessions and also provided equipment such as projectors and poster boards. The overall organization of the symposium was modeled upon that of a Gordon conference, with poster sessions sandwiched between morning and evening presentation sessions. A Geotraces discussion session, led by Tim Eglington, was also held on the afternoon of the second day. The following challenges facing chemical oceanographers were raised.

There is a need for better standards (organic and isotopic) suited for the rapidly evolving analytical capabilities of the field and representing the unique sample matrices encountered by chemical oceanographers. Tied to the need for standards is the need to better intercalibrate extraction and analytical methods so that comparable databases are produced. Such efforts will greatly improve the ability of scientists to combine published databases to develop bigger picture studies of marine geochemistry. As we near the end of the first decade of the 21st century, a number of the field's pioneering scientists are retiring (or, unfortunately, passing away). These scientists have gathered irreplaceable sample libraries from around the world. What happens to these sample libraries is presently entirely ad hoc, with some deliberately preserved, but others destroyed to liberate storage space or during lab renovations. These samples represent snapshots of oceanic conditions, which cannot be re-created, and represent a critically important record of the historical trajectories of changing oceanic conditions. A greater effort must be undertaken by the scientific community to preserve sample archives for future scientific study. Many oceanographic variables, such as pH, temperature and nutrient concentrations, are shifting rapidly in the new century. At present most oceanographic models rely upon overly simplistic organic matter flux and composition parameters and address a limited number of driving factors. The database of marine organic carbon measurements, especially fluxes, remains sparse. An unfortunate consequence is that many assumptions are made based on limited time/space scales and resolution. Numerous studies over the last decade have highlighted the presence of flux “hot spots” and “hot moments” which may generate globally significant carbon transfers to the deep sea. In order to address the need for better model parameters, detailed process studies that investigate controls on organic matter composition and flux, likely focused on a few representative sites, are needed. There is also a need for basin-wide studies of rapidly measurable organic matter parameters that can be linked to ongoing inorganic tracer studies such as Geotraces. The full abstract booklet for the meeting may be downloaded from: http://www.skio.usg.edu/news/scientificmeetings.php.