We held a 1.5 day workshop at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) on 5-6 September 2019. The stakeholder engagement workshop was aimed at communicating project plans and receiving feedback on product utility and stakeholder needs. We focused on the central project themes (physics, fish, OAH, and HABs) to allow interaction between the technical team and stakeholders. We wanted to encourage broad participation of potential end-users and technical practitioners of WCOFS products from the entire West Coast since this project directly addresses end-user needs, provides explicit model developments that can lead to future products, and implicitly offers a wealth of other potential capabilities of interest to end-users through general WCOFS improvements. Day 1 was a joint exchange of stakeholder needs and metrics with the science and technical experts in the form of presentations and half a day of targeted breakout sessions; Day 2 focused on incorporating stakeholder feedback and generating recommendations for the project team. We invited 66 people from at least 5 different sectors, and 39 attended. Thanks to IOOS, we were able to fund the travel of 18 participants and cater the breakfast and lunches for all participants.
Organizers: Clarissa Anderson (SCCOOS), Jan Newton (NANOOS), Henry Ruhl (CeNCOOS), Toby Garfield (SWFSC), Andrew DeVogelaere (MBNMS), Tommy Moore (NWIFC), and Christopher Edwards (UCSC)