Happy New Year to everyone!  We’ve finally made it to 2010 – when this first phase of the Census of Marine Life will draw to a close.  It has been an amazing adventure so far, and this year promises to be exciting indeed, as we bring together the results from all our collaborators, and integrate them with the findings of the other Census projects.  We’ll keep you posted as these various integration initiatives come to fruition. 

I am excited to announce that one of the first of these projects concludes today, with the launch by the  Public Library of Science (PLoS) of a special TOPP Collection.  This Collection consists of papers published in PLoS ONE and PLoS Biology over the past year by TOPP researchers.  It includes papers on loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles, albatrosses, bluefin tuna, and behavioral modeling.  As TOPP researchers publish additional papers in PLoS journals, they will be added to this special collection – making them easier to find for our scientific colleagues as well as journalists, students and educators who want to learn more about the work we do. 

The TOPP Collection will be one of several special collections created by PLoS for various Census of Marine Life projects, including ChEss, NaGISA, MarBOL, CenSeam projects and several others.

We are excited to be a part of this broader, global effort to better understand life in the world around us, and we look forward to sharing these discoveries with you in the year ahead.