YOUMARES4 Focusing in on Young Talents

From 11 to 13 September 2013, the University of Oldenburg (Germany) was the stage of the 4th edition of YOUMARES, a conference aiming to provide a platform for young maritime scientists. The conference attracted 150 attendees and involved 56 different universities and institutions.

The delegates mainly came from European countries, including the Netherlands, the UK, Italy, Spain, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Brazil, France and Iran. A total of 53 presentations and discussions were held in 15 sessions grouped around themes like Marine Plastic Pollution: From Sources to Solutions; What’s up with Coral Reefs and Marine Measurement Technologies: Science and Engineering stretching to Responses of Marine Fish to Multiple Envir­onmental Stressors. In add­ition to these presentations, a poster presentation was positioned hosting 35 posters in the reception hall. Organiser Johanna Wiedling expressed her appreciation for the oral presentations as the quality was high. “The presenters were mainly Bachelor and Master students and it was very motivating to see that so many different topics were addressed”, she explained.

Awards

On the Friday night, awards for the best posters and the best oral presentations were presented during the closing ceremony.

Best Posters

1. Ramona Brunner – Session 9 – Who benefits the most? - Photosynthetic responses to light and nutrient enrichment.
2. Pia Kegler – Session 7 – Stressing coral reefs – combined effects of organic pollutants and ocean warming .
3. Astrid Böhmer – Session 10 – Responses of the cold-water coral Desmophyllum dianthus to future CO2 concentrations .

Best Oral Presentations

1. Daan Mes – Session 9 – Light harvesting strategies of benthic cyanobacteria on a coral reef on Curacao.
2. Megan Nowell – Session 6 – Composition, configuration or complexity: spatial metric to manage disturbed seascapes.
3. Julia Hämer – Session 6 – Uptake, Transport and Deposition of Microplastics in Marine Isopods.
The winners were awarded book vouchers and small gifts from Springer.

Regional Keynotes

The event was opened by keynote presentations, which were all linked to aspects of the region and the Baltic area. Prof. Dr Antje Boëltius (Joint Research Group for Deep-sea Ecology and Technology, Germany) talked about her experience with Arctic coring research and challenges the melting ice cap poses to research. Oksana Udovyk (University of Stockholm, Sweden) presented risk approaches for chemical management in the Baltic. Chemicals and their handling can have important consequences on the ecology of the seafloor and her research creates a framework to handle it based on the REACH initiative. Dr Jörn Schmidt (Christian Albrechts University of Kiel, Germany) followed by sketching an ecological approach for fisheries management, which also has economic advantages. Particularly if fishermen are ready to make a small change, the advantages can be significant.

Excursions

The delegates were also given the opportunity to join one of the excursions. Two groups were able to take a trip on the research vessel Aldebaran. The sailing yacht is actually equipped as a TV studio, facilitating the broadcasting of research, thus widening the audience for the activities. Another group was welcomed to have a taster of oceanographic research on the research vessel Otzum. Workshops were held with the author Bernhard Kegel and there was a workshop on scientific publishing.

YOUMARES5

YOUMARES will be organised again and it is expected that it will be bigger than YOUMARES 4. Johanna Wiedling was clear about this: “We started small but clearly experienced the interest and took it further from there, with new editions taking place. In doing so, we attracted an increasing number of young scientists at every edition. It is good to have a platform for young scientific people and the interest in this event clearly shows that students and PhD researchers are looking for such conferences.”