[Cnidaria] CERF session

[Mary Beth Decker]

Dear colleagues, 

We would like to announce that there will be a session entitled "Jellyfish
Blooms in Changing Coastal and Estuarine Ecosystems" at the upcoming Coastal
and Estuarine Research Federation (CERF) meeting in Portland, Oregon, USA,
November 1-5, 2009.  Please see a description of this session below.  The
overarching theme of the meeting is "Coasts and Estuaries in a Changing
World"; see the CERF website for more details (http://www.erf.org/cerf2009).


We hope you will join us in Portland!  For more information about the
session, please contact the co-chairs (listed below), or find me at the ASLO
jellyfish sessions in Nice next week.  

Best wishes,
Mary Beth


Jellyfish Blooms in Changing Coastal and Estuarine Ecosystems 

Session Organizers: 
Mary Beth Decker (Yale University, marybeth.decker at yale.edu),
Jun Shoji (Hiroshima University, jshoji at hiroshima-u.ac.jp)  
Richard Brodeur (NOAA, NMFS, Rick.Brodeur at noaa.gov)

Jellyfish are dominant planktivores in many ecosystems and are known for
forming periodic and massive blooms.  Concerns that jellyfish populations
are increasing worldwide have stimulated discussion about possible causes.
Factors including climate change, overfishing, eutrophication, ocean
acidification, hypoxia, and species introductions may favor jellyfish
populations over other planktivores.  This session seeks to understand the
causes of jellyfish blooms in coastal oceans and estuaries and to suggest
methods to monitor how these important consumers respond to environmental
change.  Contributors are encouraged to focus on comparisons among systems
and the effects that these blooms have had on other components of the
ecosystem.

Invited speakers: 
Prof. Shin-ichi Uye (Hiroshima University) 
Dr. Jennifer Purcell (Western Washington University)