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A five times six metre pavilion along with models of a 3.6 metre high offshore wind turbine and lightweight sailing boat are the visual attractions at the stand of the Bremerhaven researchers at this year’s Hanover Fair in Hall 6. From 23 to 27 April 2012 the plankton biomechanics and bionics working group of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association, the virtual Helmholtz PlanktonTech Institute and the Institute for Marine Resources (imare) will be presenting themselves with their own stand for the first…

Large quantities of globally produced plastics end up in the oceans where they represent a growing risk. Above all very small objects, so-called microplastic particles, are endangering the lives of the many sea creatures. An estimate of how greatly the oceans are polluted with microplastic particles has so far failed in the absence of globally comparable methods of investigation and data. Together with British and Chilean colleagues, scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association have now analysed…

Why did the atmosphere contain so little carbon dioxide (CO2) during the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago? Why did it rise when the Earth’s climate became warmer? Processes in the ocean are responsible for this, says a new study based on newly developed isotope measurements.

So far the shrimp fisherman Uwe Abken has had little interest in the bycatch in his nets. But recently the fisherman from the East Friesian town of Neuharlingersiel has been taking a closer look. The fisherman and his deck hand have been recording which North Sea exotics and rare migratory fish get caught in their shrimp nets for the biologist Kai Wätjen from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association. This is a project with model character because fishermen, scientists and the environment benefit from the…

The polar diatom Fragilariopsis cylindrus thrives where many other forms of life would succumb – namely in the sea ice of the Arctic and Antarctic. Its survival is guaranteed by an antifreeze protein, which the alga releases into its environment. Biologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association have now succeeded in decoding the genetic plan of this natural antifreeze agent and in bioengineering the protein. In a joint project with food researchers from ttz Bremerhaven, investigations will now be…

Global warming is having an effect on the dive behaviour and search for food of southern elephant seals. Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association cooperating in a joint study with biologists and oceanographers from the Universities of Pretoria and Cape Town have discovered that the seals dive deeper for food when in warmer water. The scientists attribute this behaviour to the migration of prey to greater depths and now wish to check this theory using a new sensor which registers the feeding…

This year the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association (AWI) celebrates the 30th anniversary of the commissioning of Polarstern, the ice-breaking research and supply ship of the German polar research. Despite its age, Polarstern, providing space for a maximum of 55 scientists, still counts among the best-equipped research icebreakers in the world. RV Polarstern has not only reached the North Pole three times in its career but is also an indispensible vessel to supply the German Neumayer Station III in the…

On 31 January 1912, Wilhelm Filchner reached the Antarctic Filchner-Ronne ice shelf named after him in the second German Antarctic expedition. His work showed that, contrary to the hypotheses popular at that time, there was probably a connection between the West Antarctic Peninsula and the East Antarctic.

Even if the current weather situation may seem to speak against it, the probability of cold winters with much snow in Central Europe rises when the Arctic is covered by less sea ice in summer. Scientists of the Research Unit Potsdam of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association have decrypted a mechanism in which a shrinking summertime sea ice cover changes the air pressure zones in the Arctic atmosphere and impacts our European winter weather.