2024 Excellence in Partnering Award

The National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) is pleased to announce that the Piloting Biological Global Ocean Ship-based Hydrographic Investigations Program (Bio-GO-SHIP) on US cruises: Towards a global analysis of large-scale changes to ocean plankton systems project is the 2024 recipient of the NOPP Excellence in Partnering Award. The Excellence in Partnering Award is given annually to a NOPP project that best exemplifies the NOPP’s objective of developing a successful network of partnerships to advance the ocean sciences. Bio-GO-SHIP is led by Dr. Adam Martiny of the University of California Irvine. The team consists of members from six institutions: Harriet Alexander of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Jason Graff of Oregon State University, Nicole Poulton of Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, Luke Thompson of the Northern Gulf Institute and the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, and Sophie Clayton from the National Oceanography Centre, UK. 

CTD cast is deployed aboard the R/V Thomas G. Thompson on GO-SHIP transect I09N, 2025. Image credit: Bigelow Laboratory.

The goal of Bio-GO-SHIP is to understand the role of plankton in global biogeochemistry and quantify biodiversity across the ocean as part of GO-SHIP’s sustained decadally-repeated observations of ocean physics and chemistry. Over the past 30 years, GO-SHIP has provided critical constraints on changes in ocean heat content, ventilation, penetration of anthropogenic carbon, and oxygen loss, all of which have serious implications for marine life. Ocean biodiversity measurements such as abundance, function, and changes in distribution are fundamental to understanding marine ecosystems but are currently missing in GO-SHIP. This pilot project implemented mature technologies to measure key biological variables across GO-SHIP transects in three ocean basins and over 400 stations to start to address: (i) plankton biogeography; (ii) particle composition and elemental stoichiometry; (iii) the relationship between surface community structure and carbon sequestration; (iv) the link between surface processes and deep ocean biodiversity; and (v) how characteristic shifts in ocean plankton communities may be diagnostic of ocean changes. In the future, the Bio-GO-SHIP team plans to synthesize community feedback and transform best practices from the pilot phase of this project into sustained measurements on GO-SHIP cruises. The integration of Bio-GO-SHIP with GO-SHIP offers the potential to transform our understanding of hydrography, ocean ecosystems, the biogeochemical roles of plankton, and future changes to the oceans. 

Bio-GO-SHIP team members from NGI and AOML collect biological samples aboard the NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown on GO-SHIP transect A16N, 2023. Image credit: Tyler Christian, AOML/CIMAS.

Project highlights: 

  • Establishment of systematic ocean basin-wide patterns in plankton diversity, activity, and function through the collection of environmental DNA, RNA, and other parameters for the first time on three GO-SHIP transects in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans. 
  • Development of novel approaches to using ocean plankton as “biosensors” of environmental change. 
  • Integration of in situ bio-optical and pigment measurements with satellite data, including NASA PACE, for remote sensing calibration and validation. 
  • Production of data management and protocol intercalibration best practices allowing for greater efficiencies as well as improved integration of data into the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS). 
  • Oceanographic and laboratory training of 13 students in cutting-edge scientific techniques. 

Support for this NOPP project was provided by NOAA, NSF, and NASA. 

Learn more about Bio-GO-SHIP on the project website