Delegates to a recent marine science postgraduate conference have called for greater collaboration and communication between marine research groups in the sharing of equipment and knowledge.
This resolution was one of 14 recommendations arising from the first AMSC Marine Postgraduate Student Conference, held at Underwater World Mooloolaba in mid-October.
Thirty postgraduate students from nine Australasian institutions attended the conference to share information and discuss experiences and issues related to their postgraduate studies.
The nine institutions represented were the University of Queensland, the Australian Maritime College, the Queensland University of Technology, Central Queensland University, Griffith University, the Australian National University, the University of Newcastle, the University of New South Wales and the University of Otago (NZ).
During the conference, postgraduates presented papers on their research projects and participated in various workshops.
The conference was initiated and sponsored by the Australasian Marine Science Consortium (AMSC), with a small organising committee of University of Queensland postgraduates. Generous additional sponsorship was provided by Underwater World, in the form of a conference venue and access to extensive aquatic facilities. The University of Queensland's School of Marine Science (SoMS) provided organisational and logistic support.
AMSC Regional Director and head of SoMS Associate Professor Jack Greenwood welcomed participants to the conference and spoke about the AMSC's role, the rapidly changing university environment, the developing unity in approaches to managing marine systems and challenges and future responsibilities faced by postgraduates.
'The need for enhanced collaboration exists at all levels, from within departments to between institutions, and is particularly important as financial resources become more limited. Such arrangements would also enhance understanding. For example, coral reefs can be seen as ?super-organisms' when viewed from collaborative perspectives rather than from narrower disciplinary aspects such as geology, zoology, botany and meteorology in isolation,' one of the student organisers, Liz Cotterell said.
The conference also called for more university dollars to be spent on basic rather than applied marine research. According to Dr Greenwood, students feel that some universities perceive the future as based in applied science, which is often easier to fund.
'However, the students said basic research formed the backbone of applied science. In crises, if the basic research is not there, the applied research takes longer or is more difficult and costly to complete, they said,' Dr Greenwood said.
Other conference recommendations included closer involvement between scientists and the community (for example, through environmental monitoring, school visits and media liaison) with school students being encouraged to monitor aspects of the marine environment.
Conference participants recommended increasing public awareness of the role of science in the community, and of the long term impacts that can arise from government policy changes, such as cuts to research funding.
They also suggested development of a special code of ethics for dealing with estuarine and aquatic environments, as ethical guidelines currently in use in Australia were more relevant to terrestrial than marine animals.
Dr Greenwood said that due to overwhelming positive feedback from the postgraduate students who attended this year's conference, a similar event was being planned for 1998.
For more information, contact Dr Greenwood (telephone 07 3365 2504).
