[Coral-List] ICRS Symposium: Status of Coral Reefs of the World

[Clive Wilkinson]

Dear Coral List colleagues

We invite you to participate in a mini-symposium at the 10th International Coral Reef Symposium, Okinawa, June 2004 on Status of Coral Reefs of the World.  

We invite all countries with coral reefs to submit a National Status Report as a Poster and a publishable paper for this symposium and we are inviting all regions designated by the GCRMN to summarise these into Regional Status reports. These reports will eventually be placed on ReefBase.

We have requested the ICRS conference organisers for a large area to show these posters. In addition we will hold an oral session in which we will attempt to summarise the status of the world's coral reefs and make suggestions on the future conservation of coral reef resources. 

If you wish to report on the status of a particular area, we encourage you to contact the national and regional coordinators who work with the GCRMN or Reef Check to ensure that your material is included in this session.

The specific themes we are suggesting are: 
·	give an anecdotal description of your reefs some time in the past e.g. 100 years ago;
.	review progress in coral reef monitoring and status since ICRI, GCRMN and Reef Check were established after 1994;
·	assess the status of the reefs (especially in MPAs) now and awareness arising from the GCRMN and Reef Check;
·	predict what the reefs will be like (2 scenarios - optimistic and pessimistic) in 2014; and
·	produce recommendations and requests for the future to go from the pessimistic scenario to the optimistic one. 

Please prepare your abstracts soon and submit through the ICRS website
(http://www2.ims-plaza.co.jp/icrs2004/) and send a copy to c.wilkinson at aims.gov.au and J.Oliver at cgiar.org and gregorh at ucla.edu

We look forward to seeing you in Okinawa.

Cheers

Clive, Gregor and Jamie

Clive Wilkinson, Coordinator 
Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network 
c/o Australian Institute of Marine Science 
P.O. Box 772 
Townsville 4810 
Australia 
Tel: +61 7 4729 8452 or 4772 4314; Fax: +61 7 4729 8449; 
email: c.wilkinson at aims.gov.au or clive.wilkinson at impac.org.au 

Jamie Oliver, Senior Scientist (Coral Reef Projects)
The WorldFish Center
PO Box 500, GPO, 10670 Penang Malaysia
Street address: Jalan Batu Maung, 11960 Bayan Lepas, Penang, Malaysia
Tel: +60 4 626 1606; Fax: 60 4 626 5530
email: J.Oliver at cgiar.org Web: www.reefbase.org
 
Gregor Hodgson, PhD
Director, Reef Check Foundation
Professor (Visiting), Institute of the Environment
1652 Hershey Hall 149607
University of California at Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1496 USA

Office Tel: 310-794-4985  Fax: 310-825-0758 or 310-825-9663
Mobile 310 266 7217 (cellphone)
Email: gregorh at ucla.edu  Web: www.ReefCheck.org