Centre for Polar and Marine Research’s Wadden Sea Station on Sylt, where he heads the Working Group Community and Evolutionary Ecology and the AWI’s North Sea Office. Born in Bad Harzburg in 1968, he grew [...] thesis on species interactions on the North Sea coast. From 1998 to 2001, he pursued his doctorate on diversity and biological interactions on mussel banks in the Wadden Sea at Universität Hamburg. The close [...] cooperation between science and environmental management led to the establishment of the AWI’s North Sea Office in 2011 and the ongoing development and implementation of various environmental research

where from 1986 to 1989, he completed his doctoral dissertation on the molluscan fauna of the Weddell Sea, Antarctica. During this time and in the following two years as post-doc at AWI, he took part in five [...] expeditions, both land-based and ship-based. He describes the total of 14 months he spent in the Weddell Sea and at the British Antarctic Survey research station Signy as the best time of his life. From 1992 [...] Deputy Secretary of the international Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment in the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) in London. After a short period as an expert for the European Commission, he

glacier in North East Greenland? To answer this question we needed the bathymetry at the shelf edge of 79th glaciers As ships cannot access this area, we planned a 36 km seismic cross line on the sea ice. This [...] allowed us to collect CTD profiles (Conductivity, Temperature, Density) of the seawater. To get reliable sea ice conditions we left early, in April 2016. Conditions were cold, -25°C to -40°C causing hardware

are using old fishing nets as nesting material in their nesting colony at the island Helgoland (North Sea/Germany) (Photo: Alfred-Wegener-Institut) LITTERBASE needs your support Our database should be complete [...] This suggests the presence of hidden sinks that have not been taken into account (e.g. deep seafloor, sea ice, marine life) Are there global patterns in the distribution of litter and microplastics? What is

cracks develop in the huge closed sea ice layer. As we approach the 79° North Glacier, the situation on the Polarstern still seems tricky. Poor visibility and a lot of sea ice and icebergs protruding 10 to [...] are. Is it mainly the warming sea that gnaws on the ice tongues from below? This is the question AWI oceanographer Janin Schaffer examines using the Greenlandic 79° North Glacier as an example. In order [...] the Polarstern to the 79°North Glacier I realise how close we were to our destination. We want to go where no ship has ever been - to the eastern glacier front of the 79° North Glacier in the northeast

weather and sea-ice forecasts. The rationale: creating reliable weather and climate forecasting models means first gathering extensive data on the weather, sea ice, and the conditions at sea and on land [...] forecast” for the Arctic No-one can say for sure whether the next few days will be snowy or sunny at the North Pole: the weather forecast for the Arctic is far less reliable than for other parts of the world, [...] the Arctic than from the Mediterranean, so it hardly comes as a surprise that the weather at the North Pole also affects weather conditions in Germany. For example, researchers hypothesize that the warming

forcing their ice masses out to sea much faster than they did in the 1970s – a fact that also helps explain why this region alone accounts for ten percent of the global sea level rise. Taken together, the [...] in the Amundsen Sea? To answer that question, oceanographers at the AWI are combining climate models (see the graphic on p. 20/21) with extensive measurements gathered in the Weddell Sea, both below and [...] Dr Michael Schröder and Svenja Ryan monitored the currents in the eastern Weddell Sea – roughly 250 kilometres north of the Filchner Ice Shelf. There, at the outlet of the Filchner Trough, a deep undersea

Gloabal Change than other oceans. Sea ice strongly decraeses, temperatures rise at least twice as much, acidification and, the influence of warmer water from the North Atlantic is increasing ('Altantification') [...] relatively high proportion of biomass was being observed, the proportion of biomass in central Arctic, sea ice covered waters is relatively low. Team work P lankton E cology and B iogeochemistry in a C hanging

_________________________ Sylt (North Sea) The island Sylt in the North Sea (Photo: Alfred Wegener Institut) Sylt is the northernmost island of Germany located in the Wadden Sea of Schleswig-Holstein. Scientific [...] Offshore diving in the German Bight and North Sea Research Vessel Heincke (Photo: Alfred Wegener Institut) Dive missions in the German Bight and the North Sea are conducted from the research vessel RV [...] For sientific divers, the rocky island of Helgoland provides a unique biotope in the Southern North Sea (German Bight). Dive sites around Helgoland are typically characterized by hard bottom or sandy

following the Atlantic cod farther north.” OFOS photo of marine debris found at the bottom of the ocean in proximity of the AWI deep-sea observatory HAUSGARTEN in the Fram Stait (Sea passage between Greenland and [...] researchers have primarily focused on the visible litter floating on the sea surface or on beaches; how much litter there is in the deep seas remains largely unknown. Addressing that gap, AWI researcher Melanie [...] d to the Arctic from the more populated North Atlantic; or it could be from the ships that are now venturing farther and farther northwards as the Arctic’s sea-ice cover recedes. “Unlike in the past, we