From tooth fish to food webs, from molecular genetic tools to underwater acoustics: dive into our current research
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Reviving PALAOA or the Acoustic Homecoming
Slowly the impressive lance sinks into the ice. It reminds of a Jules Verne-like scientific instrument in the way its copper plates are bolted so craftfully. It is attached to an enormous installation with howling diesel-powered engines that breathes a slow primitive power. Maybe exactly the type of primitive power and patience that is needed to melt through 100m thick shelf ice. We are in the Antarctic standing on the Eckstroem Iceshelf and we are melting holes to finally revive our passive acoustic observatory after a 2-year data gap due to an ice shelf break off in February 2022.
Did you know?
Reef-building corals enhance the light available for their algal symbionts by 3 to 8 times relative to ambient light conditions.
A Better Future for Ocean Ecosystems
Marine conservation research is at a watershed moment. Human activities are impacting coastal and ocean ecosystems to a greater degree and at faster rates than ever before in human history. Understanding these impacts and developing effective marine conservation strategies to address them requires leveraging all the tools of ecology as well as other natural and social science disciplines.
Optimal Governance of Ecological Systems
While the primary aim of ecologists is to understand the interactions among organisms and their environment, we also have to be concerned about practical applications in the conservation of ecosystems, the protection of biodiversity, the regulation of composition of the biomass, the management of natural renewable resources – both in space and in time.
The Impacts of Oil: Ocean Governance in the Face of Disaster
This text is written by Fentje Maake who joined the Marine Governance Group at HIFMB for two weeks in October as part of a school internship to understand the work of university researchers in the social sciences, and in the study of oceanic management for biodiversity.
Maths, Ecology and the Virus
Over the past months life has been severely impacted by Covid. The pandemic has wiped the previous problems, the Australian wildfires and the rise of disinformation, off the news and off people’s minds. However, to the network scientist an important parallel exists: All of these phenomena can be understood as spreading processes on networks.
Ice Melting Into Music
Close your eyes for a moment and listen to the space you are in. Maybe you hear colleagues talking in the hall, the purr of a hard disc spinning, rain hitting the window, or when in the field the humming of a research vessel’s engine, with the hint of breaking waves against your cabin window. The world around us is full of sound and we are often only partly aware of the important role it plays in the perception of our environment and the information we implicitly derive from it.
The Long and Winding Road Toward Protection of a Pristine Antarctic Ecosystem
The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14 provide for the designation of at least 10% of coastal and offshore marine areas as Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) worldwide by 2020.