OARS AT LARGE

The 2026 Ocean Sciences Meeting (OSM) was hosted at the Scottish Event Center in Glasgow, Scotland from February 23 - 27. As the flagship global conference for the ocean sciences, OSM provides an opportunity for OARS members to connect directly with peers in the scientific community to build relationships and share the latest ocean and coastal acidification research. 

Among the bustle of this year’s plenaries, posters, and presentations, OARS celebrated the work of partner researchers affiliated with the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOA-ON), NOAA's Ocean Acidification Programme (OAP), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI), Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), and International Carbon Ocean Network for Early Career (ICONEC).. 

OARS working group member, Edith Mari, participated in Monday’s poster session in support of the OARS Framework for Action. Ms. Mari was also invited to participate in the GOA-ON Executive Council meeting ahead of the conference, where members explored synergies with OARS to ensure regional OA information being produced by GOA-ON is actionable for decision-makers. 

In another strong start to the week, OARS working group member Dr. Liz Perotti presented creative science communications strategies in a presentation titled "Making the Invisible Visible: Communicating and Advancing Capacity of Overlooked and Undervalued Ocean Science." 

“Without having an easily recognizable, charismatic spokesperson or icon, communicating ocean acidification science requires us to capitalize on new communication channels that focus on the impacts and response to OA instead of the chemistry.”

Other OARS working group members, co-champions, and co-leads attended OSM26 to showcase their work, including: Jan Newton, Punyasloke Bhadury, Carla Berghoff, Veronique Garcon, Nico Lange, and Katherina Schoo. 

In the context of climate change and the ever growing demands on our ocean and marine resources, OSM continues to be an important global convening for the ocean sciences community to ensure ongoing monitoring, science and research is actionable for decision making and benefits healthy oceans and people. 

This is especially true for the OARS community, as we work to facilitate productive science to policy conversations on the topic of ocean acidification at local to global scales. We are proud of the hard-won work of our esteemed colleagues, and we strive to turn that valuable OA data into tangible policy action.