I hope this email finds you well. My name is Anna and I’m a PhD student at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. I’m working on a thesis project to understand the biophysical and anthropogenic variables which mediate coral reef health in the South Pacific. One of the variables I’d like to include is reef connectivity.

I came across your Arc MGET toolbox and am interested in using it for my connectivity variable. I’ve already created a simulation for September - October 2011 as a test run, but would now like to expand that to create simulations for the entirety of 2015, 2016, and 2017 (El Nino, La Niña, and neither regimes) - though I’m doing 3 months at a time because of computational limitations. However, when "Loading HYCOM GLBa0.08 Currents Into Larval Dispersal Simulation," I receive the following error:

python.exe: Timed out while waiting to acquire an exclusive lock on the CTF directory. If you are running multiple simutaneous instances of this application, initialization errors may occur.
python.exe: Unable to obtain exclusive lock on CTF directory. If you are running multiple simutaneous instances of this application, initialization errors may occur.

Would you happen to know what is causing this? All other instances of ArcMap are closed. I’ve also tried adjusting the dates and other parameters when initializing the loading of the currents. 

I realize you must get many requests to get this tool to work, so I’m also willing to try a different approach. I’m hoping to write up a script in Python (or MATLAB) so that I can send the instance to our university supercomputer cluster, because running all of 2015-2017 on ArcMap would take months on our regular lab computers. If possible, do you know of any open source scripts already written to do this? I read through some of the links on this page  but was wondering if there were already others who’ve tried to run models for the same areas/time frames that I’m interested in (so as not to repeat work that was already done!). I’d greatly appreciate any guidance and am excited to get a running connectivity model for the South Pacific as soon as I can. 

And, of course, I would be happy to cite you where appropriate, and share data as we develop them. We’re happy to collaborate and contribute to your larval connectivity tool however you see fit. 

Let me know your thoughts, and thank you very much in advance for your time.

All the best,

Anna Bakker