Diana Martinez Alarcon

The ASLO (Association for the sciences of Limnology and Oceanography) aquatic sciences meeting 2017 was hold in Honolulu Hawaii from February 26^th to March 3^rd. The conference theme “From the Mountains to the Sea” emphasized the connectivity between the planet´s aquatic systems. About 85 different sessions of very spread topics, welcomed participants from at least 50 different countries around the globe. This conference had a very complete program; it included plenary sessions, award talks, art exhibition, workshops and special activities such as field trips among others.

The ASLO meeting offered interesting options for students and early career scientists, particularly several career development workshops that focused on publication and grand writing, communicating science, and different career paths, among many others. I had the opportunity to attend to two of the workshops, one of them given by a panel of people from government agencies, consulting firms, NASA, and academia, where they talked about what they do in their current job and how they got there. In addition, they also mentioned how the knowledge and the skills they learnt during their research and doctoral studies helped them to obtain the position they currently occupy.

The scientific sessions covered a large panel of topics in aquatic sciences, all of them very interesting but also quite specific. About 14 different sessions were running in parallel every day, so participants had to choose which ones to attend. Unfortunately sometimes there was more than one talk that you wanted to attend at the same time. Furthermore, scientific posters contained also very interesting information in overall. Two poster sessions were hold every day, one during the morning and other one during the afternoon. People attendance was always high. During the time I was in front of my poster, there was always somebody interested in my research topic, which was a very enriching experience.

From my personal point of view the congress environment also promoted social interactions, since all around the conference center there were plenty of tables or open spaces that could be used for that purpose. Additionally after the plenary talks, particularly in the afternoon, you could join in various events and participate in social mixers organized by the congress committee.

In general I am very happy to have participated in this congress, I will recommend it especially to PhD students and early career scientists that want to establish new contacts in their scientific field. Also I thank GLOMAR and AWI for their financial support.