David Townsend is an Associate Professor in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine. He is a biological oceanographer with interdisciplinary research interests in shelf seas, especially the Gulf of Maine. His research has ranged from studies of larval fish ecology to phytoplankton bloom dynamics and nutrient cycling. Relevant to this proposal, his prior Gulf of Maine research experience has included the first description of the Eastern Maine Coastal Current system, and descriptions of factors that control summertime coccolithophore blooms and spring phytoplankton blooms. He currently is involved in an internal wave-nutrient flux study in the Gulf of Maine, and a nutrient-phytoplankton dynamics study as part of the Georges Bank GLOBEC program.

W. Rockwell Geyer is an Associate Scientist in the Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering Department at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He specializes in coastal transport processes, with particular emphasis on the dynamics of estuaries and river plumes. He has broad experience with observational and modeling studies in estuaries and river plumes and has published extensively on these topics. He has also studied physical-biological interactions in various environments, and was directly involved in the major field investigation of Alexandrium dynamics in the western Maine coastal current (WMCC) in 1993-94.

John Cullen is a Professor in the Department of Oceanography at Dalhousie University, and the NSERC/Satlantic Chair of Environmental Observation Technology. His research interests are in: biological interpretations of optical measurements in aquatic systems; the effects of ultraviolet radiation on biological and photochemical processes in surface waters; and the physiological ecology of phytoplankton, including toxic dinoflagellates. He and Professor marlon Lewis direct the Center for Environmental Observation Technology and Research, a group of about 16 researchers and students.

Richard P. Signell is an Oceanographer at the U.S. Geological Survey. He has 10 years of research experience studying and modeling physical transport processes in the coastal ocean and has authored papers on tidal dispersion, wave-current effects on wind-driven transport, seasonal circulation hindcasting and sediment transport. His circulation and effluent dilution simulations in Massachusetts Bay were instrumental in the court ruling that the new Boston sewage outfall would not impact endangered right whales. He was the lead circulation modeler for the Gulf of Maine Regional Marine Research Program study on Red Tides in the western Gulf of Maine.

Ted Loder is a Professor at the Institute for the study of Earth Ocean and Space at the University of New Hampshire. He has been involved in research concerning nutrients in rivers, estuaries and coastal waters since the mid-1970s in New England, Peru, Jamaica, and Australia. His emphasis has been to use chemical oceanographic techniques to help interpret and understand nutrient distribution processes in the coastal zone. To support his work, he has developed a strong analytical laboratory to carry out nutrient measurements and the techniques to interpret data and the processes.

Dennis McGillicuddy, Assistant Scientist in the Department of Applied Physics and Ocean Engineering at the Woods Hole Oceanographich Institution, specializes in the study of physical-biological interactions through the incorporation of biological processes into regional models of ocean circulation. He has investigated the impacts of mesoscale eddies on open ocean plankton ecosystems with particular emphasis on nutrient cycling. He has also worked in the coastal ocean under the auspices of the GLOBEC program, looking at how population dynamics and circulation patterns conspire to control the distribution and abundance of Calanoid copepods in the Gulf of Maine / Georges Bank Region.

Daniel R. Lynch is MacLean Professor of Environmental Engineering at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH (USA). He pursues research at the intersection of advanced computation and large-scale environmental problems. He currently directs research in continental shelf circulation, with a major international focus in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank ecosystem. He serves on the Executive Committee of the US GLOBEC Northwest Atlantic Program, and was Executive Director of the Regional Association for Research on the Gulf of Maine from 1993 to 1996. He has published extensively on finite element methods in coastal oceanography and is co-editor of the forthcoming AGU volume "Quantitative Skill Assessment for Coastal Ocean Models."

Greg Doucette is an Assistant Professor of Marine Biomedical and Environmental Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina. With over 10 years of research experience in the area of HAB’s, Doucette has authored numerous papers and two book chapters on topics covering the nutrient and toxin physiology of HAB species, the role of bacteria in phycotoxin production and in regulating HAB dynamics, and the development and validation of receptor assays for detecting/quantifying algal toxins.

Jim Churchill is a Research Specialist in the Physical Oceanography Department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His principal interest is in dynamics of the coastal zone and continental shelf. He has developed statistical models to assess the potential risks associated with the discharge of sewage sludge, has quantified the effects of bottom trawling on sediment resuspension and movement over the US east coast continental shelf, and has extensively studied the influence of the Gulf Stream on dynamics of continental shelf waters. All current projects are inter-disciplinary efforts which involve extensive collaboration with biologists and chemists. These include an investigation of larval recruitment to the Carolina estuaries (part of the South Atlantic Bight Recruitment Experiment), a study of processes influencing larval recruitment over Georges Bank (Part of the Georges Bank GLOBEC project) and a study of organic carbon transport of the Carolina Continental shelf (part of the Ocean Margins Project).

Andrew Thomas is a Research Associate Professor in the School of Marine Sciences of the University of Maine. He is a biological oceanographer with more than 14 years experience using satellite and other remote sensing data to investigate the spatial and temporal patterns of biological processes in the ocean and their linkage to hydrography and physical forcing.

Jay O'Reilly is a senior Research Ecologist at the NOAA, NMFS Narragansett Laboratory. His principal research interests and experience are in: the ecology of phytoplankton and oceanographic factors influencing primary production in Northeast US coastal and continental shelf water; coastal eutrophication, including noxious blooms and hypoxia; and the application of remote sensing methods to studies of phytoplankton distribution and production. He has extensive experience participating in multi-year interdisciplinary studies (US GLOBEC Georges Bank, NOAA-EPA study of the recovery of the NY Bight sewage sludge dumpsite, EPA Long Island Sound Study, NMFS MARMAP).

Maureen Keller is a Research Scientist at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences with over twenty years of experience in the areas of phytoplankton physiology and ecology. She is currently involved in several projects that relate to this ECOHAB-GOM proposal. These include a study of spring bloom dynamics in the offshore basins of the Gulf of Maine, an ecological characterization of Penobscot Bay on the Maine coast, the influence of the Kennebec River plume on Maine coastal waters, and bloom initiation in the brown tide organism, Aureococcus anophagereffrens.

Jefferson Turner is a Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. His research for over two decades has focused on zooplankton feeding ecology, and for over a decade on plankton community analyses in coastal waters, including Buzzards Bay, Boston Harbor, Massachusetts and Cape Cod Bays. He has done extensive research on grazer/harmful algal bloom interactions in collaboration with colleagues in Canada, Jamaica, Sweden, Italy and several locations in the United States.

Neal R. Pettigrew is an Associate Professor of Oceanography in the School of Marine Science, University of Maine. He has fifteen years experience in dynamical and observational coastal physical oceanography. During much of his career he has specialized in the analysis and deployment of moored Doppler current profilers. In recent years he has conducted numerous field studies focusing on the circulation and hydrography of the Gulf of Maine, including studies of the interior Gulf, the Eastern Maine Coastal Current, Casco Bay, Penobscot Bay, and the Damariscotta, Sheepscot, and Kennebec estuaries.

Jennifer Martin is a Biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada at the Biological Station in St. Andrews, NB, Canada. She has been studying bloom dynamics and ecology of Alexandrium populations in the Bay of Fundy for the past twenty years. She has also studied toxin uptake and depuration in shellfish, sensitivity of fish to PSP toxins, Alexandrium cyst distribution, factors influencing blooms, nutrient dynamics, and determining patterns and trends of PSP shellfish toxicity from more than 50 years of data. Martin is a PI on the ECOHAB-GOM project, but will be supported in her work solely by Canadian DFO.