TOS was the lead society in organizing the February 20–24, 2012, Ocean Sciences Meeting held in Salt Lake City, Utah. Along with partner societies, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO), the planning effort took over two years under the able leadership of the meeting co-chairs Mel Briscoe (TOS), Eric Itsweire (AGU), and Mary Scranton (ASLO). Great credit is also due to the meeting organizing committee, which developed the scientific program and meeting schedule. Helen Schneider Lemay and her staff at SG Meeting and Management Services did their usual excellent job of managing logistics, including registration, exhibits, and catering. Critical in all these meeting preparations and oversight were the efforts of Jenny Ramarui, Executive Director of The Oceanography Society.

Meeting registration totaled 3,897 individuals, representing 55 countries. There were 3,536 abstracts accepted for 1,265 oral presentations and 2,271 posters. These presentations were grouped into 108 oral science sessions and 146 poster sessions. There were 54 exhibitors: 33 commercial, four government agencies, and 17 nonprofits.

Surveys from the meeting participants showed that, in general, people liked the meeting format and venue. We had many positive comments about the Wednesday morning plenary session, which had great talks and provided a sense of community for the meeting. Participants liked having posters up all week, the large poster area, and the grab-and-go snacks that provided energy for poster presenters and their audiences. Salt Lake and its Convention Center were great hosts, providing easy access, good service, and friendly people.

The meeting report and recommendations have been handed off to the 2014 Ocean Sciences Meeting co-chairs: Jonathan Sharp (ASLO), Mel Briscoe (TOS), and Eric Itsweire (AGU), who have already started to plan for the 2014 meeting in Hawaii, where we look forward to another great Ocean Sciences Meeting!

– Mike Roman, TOS President

Roman, M. 2012. From the President: The 2012 Ocean Sciences Meeting. Oceanography 25(2):6, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2012.57.

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.