Ross Sea Research Planning Meeting Oct 3–5 2022, University of Colorado Boulder

The Ross Sea region Marine Protected Area (RSRMPA) encompasses one of the healthiest marine ecosystems remaining on this planet, but one that is under increasing alteration from ongoing climate change and fishing pressure. The RSRMPA is among the world’s largest MPAs, and the biggest and most comprehensive in multi-national waters. However, an RSRMPA workshop held in April 2021 identified numerous gaps in our understanding of the highly coupled nature of the Ross Sea marine ecosystem, gaps that need to be addressed to support conservation efforts in the Ross Sea region, including informing the efficacy and management of the RSRMPA for decades to come. Therefore, the overarching goal of the Ross Sea Planning Meeting was to refine existing questions and formulate an innovative and sustainable world-class research program aimed at better understanding, conserving, and managing the RSRMPA through the coordination of collaborative, inclusive, and interdisciplinary science. Towards that goal, the Planning Meeting focused on  three complementary research tracks that together would build a sustainable research program in the Ross Sea. Those three research tracks were broadly (1) observations and ecosystem process studies, (2) data and model synthesis to improve our system-level understanding of the Ross Sea system, from its sensitivity to climate change and fisheries impacts to food web interactions, vulnerability and resiliency, and (3) data science and cyberinfrastructure to create data standards, integration and workflows for continuous tracking of data and updating predictions about the future ecosystem state. The development of a Research Network was seen as a critical next step, with a proposal submission currently under development. Such a  proposed Research Network will advance and facilitate coordination between the research tracks and with relevant international communities. Public and policy engagement was also seen as a critical piece that spans all of the research tracks and networks. Participants closed the planning meeting with the development of a conceptual framework illustrating the research tracks, created preliminary working groups for each of those tracks, and developed a plan for communicating outcomes of the Planning Meeting to the wider Ross Sea research community.