Minutes from October 17,  2001

 

Freeland, WA

Trinity Luthern Church

Call to order 4:01
Program: Dr. Paul Dinnel - Topic - Life Cycle of Dungeness Crab in the Puget Sound - From Western Washington State University - Shannon Point Research Center - (Notes to follow minutes)

Agenda Approval - Motion made by Hi Bronson and 2nd by Don Meehan to approve agenda. Unanimous approval.

Phase II eelgrass survey: Motion made by Hi Bronson to award contract to Marine Resources Consultants, 2nd by Dr. P. Kind. Good discussion followed focusing on quality science, DNR's respect for the Norris work, and future work. Vote- Unanimous approval.

Action Grant: Discussion centered on having it embody at least three elements, Feeder bluff Study, Estuary Study, and Website support. Grant is from NWSC and is 50K.

Work Plan update: Don Meehan wanted all members to offer up benchmark related items for building the work plan for this next year.
Roger Sherman: MPA's - will provide his items after the MPA conference in Canada this week. He had also been talking with State Parks about the Keystone "MPA" and its problems. Wants the MRC to tackle that this next year.
Hi Bronson- shellfish - Felt like this benchmark had been well covered during the last few months, but will be thinking of other things we should be looking at.
Dick Toft - Bottom/Flat Fish - He would like us to do something like the Skagit MRC has done to define the bottomfish areas. Gallion and Meehan wanted to see flatfish brought into the picture.
Jeff Tate - Nearshore - Pretty well covered with all the projects we have in the works. Jeff wanted to see if there were connections/correlation's between development level and habitat quality.
Tom Campbell - Indicator Species - He feels it is a little early to focus on specific species as the most important indicator.
Don Meehan -Education - Lots presently going on….Sound Waters set for Feb 2nd will have the theme "Near the Shore" and will feature Si Simemstad as keynote speaker and have lots of nearshore related classes. Funding support is coming from the Nearshore Project, not the admin. Grant of the MRC. Big effort underway on Camano as well.

Educational component of the Work Plan:
A number of ideas were shared by the group: A Tribal Presentation, Doug Kelly and Jeff Tate on GIS and what it can or can't do for the MRC, Salmon Habitat MPA's, Langley Marina project, Flatfish, Keystone Jetty Underwater (Henry Powers), Science of data interpretation, and it was noted a number of topics in the existing work plan were still valid and should be left in. Meehan will attempt to have a draft ready at the next meeting.

Contract with Intertidal increase: Meehan explained to the group that Dan Penttila's work is coming in under budget. His data requires conversion to digital in order to provide maximum application and flexibility. We will task Intertidal with this conversion and increase the contract by $1000. Gary Wood of Intertidal will hire Doug Kelly or his wife to do data entry. The shift of funds balances out within the nearshore project budget. Meehan indicated that he would like to sell the digital data to WDFW. He will be exploring.
Motion to increase Intertidal contract by $1,000 made by Dick Toft, 2nd by Jeff Tate---Unanimous approval.

Statistician: Meehan explained that he was bringing aboard Dr. Jan Dasgupta from Washington State University who is very interested in applying statistical methods to environmental studies. We may be using her as a paid part of our projects. At minimum she will be an advisor.

Meeting Adjourned at 6:15PM