Please note that this year’s webinars are only open to those directly involved with OBON (ie SAC members, project teams and working group members).  However, the presentation recordings will be made available on OBON’s YouTube channel after the event.

The second ‘Americas’ Session, will take place on 7 October, 21:00-22:30 (UK Time), as part of our preparations for the OBON Annual Meeting in Dhaka, Bangladesh (30 Nov to 4 Dec 2026).

To help foster discussion and knowledge exchange across the network, we have slightly revised the format compared with previous years.

The first part of the session will feature projects presenting at an OBON webinar for the first time. We have allocated up to 15 minutes per presentation, to allow these projects to introduce their objectives, planned activities and expected contributions to the OBON community.

The second part of the session will include a project that has previously participated in OBON webinars, providing updates on recent progress, achievements and priorities. We have allocated up to 10 minutes for this project update.

To encourage interaction, we have reserved the final part of the session for SAC Reflections, Questions and Comments. This will provide an opportunity for members of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) to share observations, identify common themes across projects, and offer feedback, followed by discussion with all participants.

To ensure that all projects have an opportunity to present and participate in the discussion, we kindly ask presenters to keep within their allocated time. To help with this, Luz will provide a reminder when there is one minute remaining.

Presentation guidance

When preparing your slides, please ensure that you address the information requested in the registration form:

For newly endorsed projects: (Up to 15 minutes)

• A brief introduction to the project, including its objectives and planned activities;
• Any areas where collaboration with the wider OBON community may be beneficial.

For existing projects (Up to 10 minutes)

• One key achievement since the last webinar;
• One challenge or question for discussion;
• One collaboration opportunity or request for support.

You do not need to structure your presentation strictly around these points, but please ensure they are covered, as they will help facilitate discussion and engagement from both the community and SAC members.

Technical Arrangements

To help us start on time, we kindly ask all presenters to join 10 minutes before the webinar begins (20:50 UK time) so that we can test screen sharing and address any technical issues.

If possible, please also share either a PDF version of your presentation or a presentation link with the Secretariat in advance. This provides a useful backup should any technical difficulties arise during the webinar.

Agenda (21:00 UK Time)

OBON Project Community Webinar Series – Americas Session

• 21:00 – 21:05     Connection
• 21:05 – 21:10     OBON Introduction

First Time Projects Presentation

• 21:10 – 21:25  Latin American Ocean Biomolecular Observation Network (LACOBON)- Vanessa Yepes, INVEMAR
• 21:25 – 21:40  GloMBO: Globalising Marine Biodiversity Observations – Pascal Craw, CSIRO
• 21:40 – 21:55  Bio-GO-SHIP – Luke Thompson, NOAA

Projects update

• 21:55 – 22:05  DNA-based Approaches to Fisheries Monitoring – Nastassia Patin, UCSD
• 22:05 – 22:30    SAC Reflections, questions and comments.

We look forward to hearing about your work and bringing the OBON community together ahead of the Annual Meeting.

Please contact Luz in the OBON project office if you have any questions.

Please note that this year’s webinars are only open to those directly involved with OBON (ie SAC members, project teams and working group members).  However, the presentation recordings will be made available on OBON’s YouTube channel after the event.

The first ‘Europe’ Session, will take place on 28 September, 14:00-15:30 (UK Time), as part of our preparations for the OBON Annual Meeting in Dhaka, Bangladesh (30 Nov to 4 Dec 2026).

To help foster discussion and knowledge exchange across the network, we have slightly revised the format compared with previous years.

The first half of the session will feature projects presenting at an OBON webinar for the first time. We have allocated up to 15 minutes per presentation, to allow new projects to introduce their objectives, planned activities and expected contributions to the OBON community.

The second half of the session will focus on projects that have previously participated in OBON webinars, providing updates on recent progress, achievements and priorities. We have allocated up to 8 minutes per presentation for these project updates.

To encourage interaction and avoid a series of back-to-back presentations, we have also introduced dedicated SAC Reflection slots. These will provide an opportunity for members of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) to share observations, identify common themes across projects, and offer feedback, followed by discussion with all participants.

To ensure that all projects have an opportunity to present and participate in the discussion, we kindly ask presenters to keep within their allocated time.

Presentation guidance

When preparing your slides, please ensure that you address the information requested in the registration form:

For newly endorsed projects: (Up to 15 minutes)

• A brief introduction to the project, including its objectives and planned activities;
• Any areas where collaboration with the wider OBON community may be beneficial.

For existing projects (Up to 8 minutes)

• One key achievement since the last webinar;
• One challenge or question for discussion;
• One collaboration opportunity or request for support.

You do not need to structure your presentation strictly around these points, but please ensure they are covered, as they will help facilitate discussion and engagement from both the community and SAC members.

Agenda

OBON Project Community Webinar Series – Europe Session

• 14:00 – 14:05     Connection
• 14:05 – 14:10     OBON Introduction

First Time Projects Presentation

• 14:10 – 14:25     HERPOPS (Violaine Dolfo – Institute of Marine Research, Norway)
• 14:25 – 14:40    BIOcean5D (Raffaele Siano – IFREMER)
• 14:40 – 14:55    eDNA expeditions 2026-2028 (Saara Suominen – UNESCO)
• 14:55 – 15:05     SAC Reflections, questions and comments.

Projects updates

• 15:05 – 15:13     DNA-based approaches to fisheries monitoring (Filipe Costa – University of Minho)
• 15:13 – 15:21      Marma Detox (Heli Routti, Norwegian Polar Institute)
• 15:21 – 15:30     SAC Reflections, questions and comments.

We look forward to hearing about your work and bringing the OBON community together ahead of the Annual Meeting.

Please contact Luz in the OBON project office if you have any questions.

The series will also help set the scene for discussions at the OBON Annual Meeting, taking place from 30 November to 4 December 2026 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, by giving us an opportunity to hear from projects ahead of the meeting and identify common themes, opportunities and priorities across the community.

All project leads have been emailed directly to share webinar dates and a link to help us finalise the programme.  We request all projects to complete the form by 14 September.

Please note that this year’s webinars will only be open to those directly involved with OBON (ie SAC members, project teams and working group members).  However, the presentation recordings will be made available on OBON’s YouTube channel after the event.

Please contact Luz in the OBON project office if you have any questions.

To help us with planning, we ask OBON project representatives to please complete the registration form as soon as possible: https://forms.gle/YViXwnK3KNSnQ6Fn6

We expect to share the draft agenda in early October, but in the meantime, we would appreciate receiving your registration and travel support information as early as possible.

Travel support

Please complete the form as soon as possible so that we can plan the allocation of travel support funding. Responses will be reviewed as they are received, and available funding will begin to be allocated from 15 September on a first-come, first-served basis.

Please note that travel support funding is limited this year. If you have access to other sources of funding for your travel, we would be very grateful if you could use those resources, as this will allow us to support colleagues who would otherwise be unable to attend.

For those requiring travel support, the registration form will remain open until 14 September 2026.

If you do not require travel support, the form will remain open until 30 October 2026.

Looking ahead

As a new addition this year, the registration form also includes an opportunity to express interest in hosting a future OBON Annual Meeting. To help the community plan further ahead and secure dates earlier in organisational calendars, we are beginning discussions around potential hosts for the 2027 and 2028 Annual Meetings.

If your organisation may be interested in hosting, we encourage you to indicate this in the form. Interested organisations will have the opportunity to present their proposal during the Annual Meeting, after which nominations will be considered through the OBON election process.

Unable to attend?

If you already know that you will not be able to attend, please let us know responding to this message. We would also encourage your organisation or project to nominate a delegate to participate on your behalf where possible, so that we can ensure broad representation from across the OBON community.

We are looking forward to welcoming you to Dhaka and bringing the community together for what promises to be an exciting and productive meeting.

The Ocean Biomolecular Observing Network (OBON) is building a global network of researchers, observing systems, and infrastructure to generate interoperable biomolecular data across the inland-to-ocean continuum. Concurrently, the network is working to expand reference libraries, integrate biomolecular data into ecological models, and build global capacity to ensure equitable access to these technologies.

OBON has a session at ALSO 2027 and invites contributions from both limnological and oceanographic communities. We particularly welcome studies spanning methodological advances, observing system development, reference library creation, time-series and field observations, modelling applications, and the translation of biomolecular data into management and policy outcomes. We particularly encourage research demonstrating how biomolecular observations can address the drivers of environmental change, map freshwater-to-marine connectivity, and create new opportunities for aquatic ecosystem stewardship, conservation, sustainable living marine resources and resilient aquatic futures.

Find out more, and submit your abstract (from 28 July) at: https://www.aslo.org/san-juan-2027/

Keywords: eDNA, Biodiversity, Biomolecular, Technology, Citizen Science

As endorsed projects of the UN Ocean Decade, we have all agreed to make our data reach FAIR standards. But it’s hard, right? Let’s work on it together!

We are excited to offer an online workshop just for OBON members. Drawing on expertise from within the OBON network, the workshop will help you programmatically create outputs of YOUR eDNA data and protocols. These outputs will not only be compatible with standards, but will be uploadable to OBIS and other international platforms when you are ready.

1. Codify the variety of methods used by your project that follow BeBOP standards to make your methods both transparent and machine-readable.
2. Standardize your eDNA data and metadata following FAIR eDNA (FAIRe) guidelines.
3. Know how to publish DNA-derived data using OBIS eDNA Services.

BeBOP

• You will be able to report to the UN Ocean Decade and your funders that you are following international standards to make your eDNA data FAIR.
• Your data will be interoperable which means we can start to combine our data and analyse them together. By analysing our data together we can be greater than the sum of its parts!
• We will attempt to make conversions programmatic when possible, so work now will pay off in future years.

• Members of any OBON project who have eDNA data in hand and are able to do some coding. This first workshop will be especially useful for anyone with metabarcoding data, but targeted (qPCR) projects will also benefit.

• The workshop will have self-paced tutorial videos with example datasets for you to work through on your own time, and then two synchronous online group sessions to work together and answer questions.
• Tutorial materials will be distributed approximately two weeks before each session. It is expected that you work through the materials before the group session, but we are here to help.
• Each online session will be held twice to accommodate different time zones.

• Session 1: FAIRe/BeBOP
  • 21 July 2026 1:00 – 3:00 am UTC
  • 23 Jul 2026 13:00 – 15:00 pm UTC
• Session 2: OBIS and review
  • 4 August 2026 1:00 – 3:00 am UTC
  • 6 August 2026 13:00 – 15:00 pm UTC

Tutorial Videos on YouTube

Links to other workshop materials

• FAIRe demo datasets: https://github.com/FAIR-eDNA/Workshop/tree/main/2026-07%20OBON%20workshop
• FAIRe-NOAA datasets: https://github.com/aomlomics/ODE_testdata/tree/main/noaa-sefsc-gu1901