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Dr. Bill Peterson passed away on August 12, 2017 after having bravely faced cancer for the past three years. Bill was an oceanographer, marine biologist and climate scientist for NOAA, who most recently (since 1995) worked at the NOAA lab located in the Hatfield Marine Science Center complex (Newport, Oregon) as a senior scientist for more than 20 years. Prior to that, he worked for NOAA in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he was the Program Manager of the US GLOBEC Program and Director of US GLOBEC Interagency Program Coordination Office. In 2016 he was awarded a Distinguished Career Award by NOAA and was the recipient of NOAA's Bronze Award three times (2004, 2005, 2008) for outstanding contributions in management that increase the efficiency and effectiveness of an operating unit.
Bill had been engaged in PICES since 1998 when he attended his first Annual Meeting. He was a member of the PICES-GLOBEC International Program on Climate Change and Carrying Capacity and served as Co-Chair of the Program's REX Task Team. He was also a long time member (1999-2017) of the Biological Oceanography Committee and Co-Chaired the Working Group on Comparative Ecology of Krill in Coastal and Oceanic Waters Around the Pacific Rim (WG 23). Many in the marine and freshwater zooplankton community world-wide knew Bill through his attendance at many of the International Zooplankton Production Symposia (ZPS)-Bill having attended all of the ZPS from #2 (1994, Plymouth, UK) through #5 (2011, Pucón, Chile). Bill served on the Scientific Steering Committee of the 3rd ZPS (2003, Gijón, Spain) and was an editor of the published ICES Marine Science Symposia, Vol. 220 (The role of Zooplankton in Global Ecosystem Dynamics: Comparative Studies from the World Oceans). At the 4th ZPS (2007, Hiroshima, Japan), Bill co-convened a 1-day workshop titled "Krill research: current status and its future" with So Kawaguchi (Australia) which resulted in publication of a special issue of Deep-Sea Research Topical Studies in Oceanography on Krill Biology and Ecology. Unfortunately, Bill was too ill to attend the Bergen, Norway Symposium (#6, 2016). Bill served leadership roles for efforts other than "zooplankton". A prime example is when he served as the PICES Convener for the first PICES/ICES/IOC Symposium on the "Effects of climate change on the world's oceans"...