Written by Martine Solås // 12 June 2022
A few weeks ago, several of the HypOnFjordFish group members travelled to Liège in Belgium for the 53rd International Colloquium on Ocean Dynamics (3rd GO2NE Oxygen Conference) from the 16th to the 20th of May. This year’s theme was “Low oxygen environments in marine and coastal waters: Drivers, consequences, and solutions”. This was the perfect arena for us to share some our work and for us to connect and discuss with other scientists working on ocean deoxygenation.
For those of us travelling from Bergen, the temperature difference between Bergen and Liège was noticeable (going from about average May temperatures of below 15°C to 20-28 °C in Liège). The weather treated us nice most of the week, except for some rain during the last day. However, we did not have much time to explore the city; the conference was packed with excellent talks and posters from morning until the afternoon/evening.
PI Anne Gro Vea Salvanes gave an oral presentation about the overall goals of HypOnFjordFish and how we use our Western Norwegian fjords to study questions related to ocean deoxygenation. Postdoc Natalya Gallo presented some of the current findings on how the mesopelagic and demersal community responded to rapid deoxygenation in Masfjorden.
PhD students Francesco Saltalamacchia and Martine Røysted Solås both presented posters during the conference (on mesopelagic fish growth and light environment respectively) and received good comments and valuable feedback on their research. Martine even went home with the best poster prize, as evaluated by the conference organizers, and Francesco was a close second for the public poster prize.
PhD students Francesco Saltalamacchia and Martine Røysted Solås next to their posters.
The conference itself was impressively put together; it was a hybrid conference with both online attendance and long-awaited in-person attendance. The organizers at Liège University did a wonderful job making it all run as smoothly as possible, and the rest of us could just enjoy the science and discussions.
It was also great to finally meet (again or for the first time) HypOnFjordFish PIs Lisa Levin and Karin Limburg in person. Online group meetings are useful, but discussions and ideas tend to flow much more easily and efficiently when you can be in a room together.
We are now looking forward to diving back into our research with new inspiration and perspectives after a productive week with other scientists working on ocean deoxygenation. Thank you to GO2NE and the organizers in Liège for a successful conference!
You can read more about the conference here: OCEANCOLLOQUIUM – 53rd International Colloquium on Ocean Dynamics (uliege.be).
