Discovering the worlds near shore - an introduction to the NAGISA project

P. Robin Rigby

Seto Marine Biological Lab, Kyoto University, 459 Shirahama, Wakayama 649-2211, Japan.
E-mail: nagisaonline@yahoo.com, NaGISA web site www.nagisa.coml.org, CoML portal www.coml.org.

Katrin Iken,one of NaGISA co-PIs for the Eastern Pacific region,showing off quadrats while diving in Prince William Sound, Alaska. © Nagisa 2003.

What lives on the oceans doorstep, is there a pattern to how much lives where, how will these things change over time? The edge of the ocean is the part that we are most familiar with and yet we are not able to answer these questions. The need for an integrated assessment of global coastal biodiversity has resulted in an effort know as Natural Geography In Shore Areas, referred to by its acronym NaGISA meaning coastal ecosystem in Japanese. To determine baseline diversity in the world's coastal zone and to compare areas separately and through time NaGISA has set its goal as a series of well-distributed standard transects from the high inter-tidal zone to the depth of 20m covering the world (from pole to pole and around the equator) to be run for the next 50 years.

Targeting hard bottom macroalgal and soft bottom sea grass communities due to their global distribution, relative complexity and poor characterization NaGISA has revised protocols developed in advance of the International Biodiversity Observation Year (IBOY) 2001-2002. The protocols are simple, cost efficient and intentionally low-tech allowing them to be adopted by many different research groups and countries. The standardized techniques will allow for biodiversity to be compared over latitude, longitude and through time in an online database, scheduled for public release in early 2005 (www.nagisa.coml.org). As a part of the Census of Marine Life (CoML); a global project discovering what was, what is and what will be in the oceans, data will also be made available through the Censuses Ocean Biogeography Information System (www.iobis.org).

NaGISA protocols constitute the minimum standardized sampling requirements for biodiversity determination, although scientists are welcome to incorporate additional sampling parameters at local sites the standardized protocol includes:

1. Passive sampling, photography and observational techniques, estimates of percent cover of colonial invertebrates and rhizoidal macro algae and counts of algal stripes and solitary fauna within quadrates.
2. Active sampling, core samples of sea grass beds, and careful removal of organisms from small quadrants within macro algal sites.
3. Assessment, measurements of surface and bottom seawater temperature and a visual classification of substrata.

NaGISA projects are run out of universities, institutes and research stations in participating countries that organize local study sites, sampling, outreach and education. NaGISA international is based in Japan and is responsible for the overall links between administrative centres, as well as database and workshop development. Currently the two administrative centres in the University of Kyoto, Seto Marine Laboratory and University of Alaska, Fairbanks are the hub of all ongoing research however there are plans for them to be joined by a South American, European and South Seas centre.

A unique aspect of NaGISA is in the meeting of the goal of global biodiversity coverage by locally vested interests around the world, while creating a standardized data matrix suitable for testing a wide range of ecological theories and solving practical problems. No other project has ever dealt with biodiversity information with such fine resolution on such a wide scale, nor tried to deal with the large knowledge debt in the taxonomic field. With links to the Global taxonomic initiative (GTI) and the Japans Promotion of Science (JSPS) who have placed education at the forefront of there mandate NaGISA has already begun to make progress in these areas. Current projects include various Taxonomic workshops, high school and university programs and educational exchanges. Developments in the field of taxonomic methods for study of meiofauna using flow-cytometry techniques, gel suspension and holographic imaging are also underway. It is NaGISA`s hope that by improving the general understanding of biodiversity and the methods in taxonomic study, we will promote and maintain a more thorough and accurate characterization of the worlds coastal biodiversity.