Why focus a whole day on food webs?
 
Overarching questions:
1) Where has all the anthropogenic CO2 gone?
 
2) Where will the anthropogenic CO2 go in the future?
We need to understand the role of marine food webs in the carbon cycle in order to answer these questions. This is the primary motivation for SMP and JGOFS in general.
 
What is the state of our current understanding of marine food webs, their variability and their role in elemental (particularly carbon) cycling?  Do we understand these cycles fully?  Have we achieved the goal of simulating present day carbon and nutrient cycling?  Can we predict the future?