Representatives from the science party for each cruise are required to participate in a pre-cruise planning meeting to discuss ship board operations. Once the science program is scheduled on Healy, the Chief scientist will be notified by STARC (the ship-base science technical support team) about a pre-cruise meeting. The meeting will usually be scheduled via a Doodle poll so that everyone involved has a chance to participate. The pre-cruise meeting will be a webinar-telecon session, unless personnel from the science party would like to have the meeting on the ship in Seattle.