YOUMARES 8

Ocean across boundaries: Learning from each other

From 13 to 15 September, the YOUMARES 8 conference was guest at the University of Kiel and the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel.

In total about 180 young marine researchers from within Europe and overseas met to participate over 90 oral and about 25 poster presentations which were topically organized in 15 scientific sessions. Thus, this year’s YOUMARES was the biggest edition of this series so far.

We were grateful to welcome so many participants to YOUMARES 8 at the University of Kiel. We hope that all of you enjoyed interesting talks, informative and helpful workshops and got to know a lot of other nice people

We were also very happy that we were able to meet at Kiel University, place of the Cluster of Excellence “The Future Ocean” with organizational support of the “Integrated School of Ocean Sciences” (ISOS). And as usually, we meet for an icebreaker event on the first evening: Wednesday, 13th September 2017 at GEOMAR.

YOUMARES 8 was preceded by the annual meeting of the German Society of Marine Research (DGM) and the DGM-Forum. The icebreaker, which was as usual a shared event between the participants of the DGM-Forum and the participants of the YOUMARES, was held in the east shore buildings of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research. The last two days were full of scientific sessions, workshops, a poster session and keynote talks. For the latter, we welcomed Prof Dr Mojib Latif (GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Kiel) who intrroduced “The role of the oceans in climate change” and Dr Claudia Hanfland (Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar an Marine Research, Bremerhaven) who gave a talk on “Career planning -Advice from the Cheshire Cat”.

Awards

As a long time supporter, SPRINGER sponsored awards for the three best poster and oral presentations:

Best Poster:

  1. Clea van de Ven & Titus Rombouts – A deep-sea sponge loop? Tracing carbon and nitrogen from DOM to sponges and detritivores
  2. Mildred Johnson & Laura Hennings – The effect of elevated and fluctuating pCO2 concentrations on the growth of calcifying marine epibionts
  3. Enrico Armelloni – Embryonic ontogeny of upper beak in Octopus vulgaris

Best Talk:

  1. Nora-Charlotte Pauli – Fouling and degradation of plastic bags – an in situ experiment
  2. Sara Doolittle-Llanos – Plastic as a vector for marine invasive species in the Galapagos archipelago, Ecuador
  3. Maha Cziesielski – Investigating transcriptome and proteome heat stress response of the cnidarian model organism Exaiptasia pallida

The winners were awarded book vouchers from Springer Nature.

YOUMARES 8 Sessions:

  1. Sentinels of the Sea: Ecology and Conservation of Marine Top Predators
    Session chairs: Dominik A. Nachtsheim and Brigitte C. Heylen
  2. Reading the book of life – -omics as a universal tool across disciplines
    Session chairs: Jan D. Brüwer and Hagen Buck-Wiese
  3. Physical processes in the tropical and subtropical oceans: Variability, impacts, and connections to other components of the climate system
    Session chairs: Tina Dippe and Martin Krebs
  4. Cephalopods: Life histories of evolution and adaptations
    Session chairs: Fedor Lishchenko and Richard Schwarz
  5. Ecosystems dynamics in a changing world: regime shifts and resilience in marine communities
    Session chairs: Camilla Sguotti and Xochitl Cormon
  6. The interplay between marine biodiversity and ecosystems functioning: patterns and mechanisms in a changing world
    Session chairs: Francisco R. Barboza, Maysa Ito and Markus Franz
  7. Ocean optics and ocean color remote sensing
    Session chairs: Veloisa Mascarenhas, Yangyang Liu and Therese Keck
  8. Polar ecosystems in the age of climate change
    Session chairs: Maciej Mańko and Katarzyna Walczyńska
  9. The physics of the Arctic and Subarctic oceans in a changing climate
    Session chairs: Camila Campos and Myriel Horn
  10. Phytoplankton in a changing environment – adaptation mechanisms and ecological surveys
    Session chairs: Jana Geuer and Laura Käse
  11. How do they do it? – Understanding the success of marine invasive species
    Session chairs: Jonas Geburzi and Morgan L. McCarthy
  12. Coastal ecosystem restoration – innovations for a better tomorrow
    Session chairs: Jana Carus and Matthias Goerres
  13. Microplastics in aquatic habitats – environmental concentrations and consequences
    Session chairs: Thea Hamm, Claudia Lorenz and Sarah Piehl
  14. Tropical aquatic ecosystems across time, space and disciplines
    Session chairs: Mona Andskog, Hannah Earp, Natalie Prinz and Maha Cziesielski
  15. Open Session
    Session chair: Simon Jungblut

YOUMARES Orga-Team

Dr. Viola Liebich, Simon Jungblut, Dr. Maya Bode, Lena Heel, Thea Hamm, Ola Nour, Elham Kamyab, Veloisa Mascarenhas, Jeoline Ezekiel, Mara Weidung, Jan Brüwer, Lisa Hentschel, Olga Sazonova, Dorothee Hohensee, Maral Khosravl, Timothy Tompson