Re: [Fwd: SEACOOS White Paper for Marine Emergency Management Applications Team]

Chris,
   While I agree that perhaps not enough thought went into the initial 
organization, and I also admit that I was originally nonplused by the 
Teams concept (I was afraid of one more level of work leading nowhere - 
so I am taking no credit whatsoever for the Teams concept), I must say 
that now I am firmly behind it, with a caveat, of course.  If we limit 
each team to an enumerated set of topics on which we can indeed perform, 
then each Team may potentially overcome the cultural barriers and 
advance the way in which academics, government and private sector groups 
engage.  If we make the Teams too broad then we will have neither the 
energy nor the personnel to perform well enough.  So in that sense we 
could reorganize and expand, but I would prefer to use the workshop to 
cull what we have down to a mutually agreeable set of topics within 
three teams (waves, fisheries, SAR, or however we want to reword these) 
and attempt to do good work on a limited few foci.
   I believe that we are saying similar things.  It then becomes the 
choice of what we think we want to work on (and no one is limited to 
just working on a specific Team topic).  From the various discussions 
that I've had I do think that fisheries provides a strategic, stand 
alone focus even though its P.O. needs (Eulerian and Lagrangian 
circulation) complement those of the other teams.
   In summary, while COOS must be all things to all OceanUS enumerated 
issues, the SEACOOS Teams, in my opinion, should focus in on a small 
subset of these issues (our Teams preamble should be broad, but our 
initial application should be narrow).  If we do this well then we will 
have set a template for how to tackle other issues in a 
multidisciplinary, multiagency way.
   It will be difficult to come to a limited number of topics, and these 
may vary between subregions, but I think it will be worth the effort.
Bob