Promoting sustainable and inclusive oceans management in Pacific islands through women and science.

The question of how to efficiently and effectively manage ocean resources in a sustainable way has reached the forefront of discussion at an international level, but women's contributions to this process have been underestimated or unrecognized. Inclusive management plays a major role in the effective creation, use and adoption of environmental governance, necessitating efforts to measure, monitor and advance inclusivity. In many Pacific island states, there is a lack of disaggregated data collection and management to assist reliable and liable gender-responsive decision-making by national and regional authorities. This lack of information leads to unquantified female contributions and unexplored potential for women to actively contribute to sustainable ocean management as traditional leaders, researchers or science-based managers and in accordance with traditional customs, cultures and processes. This paper examines the contribution of gender-disaggregated data in both (1) effective management of natural resources and (2) measurement and monitoring of the active involvement of women in ocean management. We seek to shift the question from simply "(How) are oceans used by women?" to "How can we build a clear path towards inclusive oceans management using science?", drawing data mainly from gender and ocean management practices in Pacific Small Island Developing States. This work also seeks to ground in reality the increasing national and international evocations about social equity and avoidance of gender discrimination. Given the existing relationships of Pacific peoples with the ocean and the emerging status of ocean science-based governance, wider integration of science and women in marine management can make an interesting and positive impact in this region.

Geographic and phylogenetic variation in bacterial biovolume as revealed by protein and nucleic acid staining.

Biovolume is an important characteristic of cells that shapes the contribution of microbes to total biomass and biogeochemical cycling. Most studies of bacterial cell volumes use DAPI (4',6'-diamidino-2-phenylindole), which stains nucleic acids and therefore only a portion of the cell. We used SYPRO Ruby protein stain combined with fluorescence in situ hybridization to examine biovolumes of bacteria in the total community, as well in phylogenetic subgroups. Protein-based volumes varied more and were consistently larger than DNA-based volumes by 3.3-fold on average. Bacterial cells were ca. 30% larger in the Arctic Ocean and Antarctic coastal waters than in temperate regimes. We hypothesized that geographic differences in the abundance of specific bacterial groups drove the observed patterns in biovolume. In support of this hypothesis, we found that Gammaproteobacteria and members of the Sphingobacteria-Flavobacteria group were larger in higher-latitude waters and that the mean volumes of both groups were larger than the mean bacterial volume in all environments tested. The mean cell size of SAR11 bacteria was larger than the mean cell size of the total bacterial community on average, although this varied. Protein staining increases the accuracy of biovolume measurements and gives insights into how the biomass of marine microbial communities varies over time and space.