No, I didn’t spell surfing wrong. (Although when I googled “florida surfing” DaytonaBeach.com was the first site to com up. But no, I am not in Daytona Beach to go surfing. I am here to go CERFing. What does that mean?
Well, CERF is the acronym for the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation and Daytona Beach just happens to be the spot of their 2011 convention. Over a thousand scientists from the US and abroad will descend upon Daytona Beach (many starting tonight) to talk about all things related to coasts and estuaries. This year’s theme is “Societies, Estuaries and Coasts: Adapting to Change,” and, in fact there are numerous sessions about how to engage and involve the public in coastal science and how to utilize best management practices. There is even a special poster session open to the public.
CERF is a massive conference (and if you don’t believe me you can go take a gander at their Program and Abstract book for this year’s conference here). At any one time there are concurrent sessions – that means that at any point in the next five days, up to 10 talks are going on, and potentially over 200 talks per day. Add to that poster sessions with many hundreds more presentations, and you get the idea about how many people are here presenting research on a wide array of topics. I can’t see them all, nobody can, but I am going to try to go to as many as possible. And, oh yeah, I am giving a presentation too, on Monday morning!
Be sure to stay tuned for conference highlights during the next week (although I will likely get to them after).
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