The vision of Bio-GO-SHIP is to develop a deep understanding of the link between the physio-chemical environment and global ocean plankton diversity, abundance, and biogeochemical roles in the context of a changing ocean.
The mission of Bio-GO-SHIP is to quantify the molecular diversity, size spectrum, chemical composition, and abundances of plankton communities across large spatial, vertical, and eventually temporal scales. This will be achieved through systematic, high-quality, and calibrated sampling of ‘omics, plankton imaging, particle chemistry, and optical techniques as operational oceanographic tools. Integration with regular GO-SHIP measurements and their analyses of the physical and chemical environment will allow us to understand (and eventually predict) how plankton communities respond to ocean changes and how biological processes feeds back on carbon, oxygen and nutrient cycles.
There are several community benefits to Bio-GO-SHIP . The community-led effort will generate a uniform global set of quantitative data of plankton communities. This will be achieved using a suite of vetted techniques that are rigorously curated and publicly available [Boss et al., 2020]. All biological data is coincident with measurements and analyses from the regular GO-SHIP program. We will train a cohort of students, research associates, and K-12 teachers in new oceanographic approaches and analyses.
