A special research expedition recently took a team from Oldenburg to a stretch of sea north of Heligoland. The researchers had to overcome some unusual challenges amongst the huge turbines of an offshore wind farm.

Since 2002, a permanent monitoring station run by the university has been continuously collecting key environmental data between Langeoog and Spiekeroog. This year, the unique research facility is going to be replaced.

The UN High Seas Treaty came into force in January, raising questions over where protected areas should be established by 2030. Researchers from the universities of Oldenburg and Bremen are investigating this in the AGELESS project.

Coral reefs are dying all over the world. Is it possible to artificially reproduce marine animals in order to reforest reefs? Doctoral candidate Laura Fiegel travelled to the island of Moorea in the middle of the South Pacific for three months to conduct field experiments.

Low algal growth despite high iron supply: Study uncovers surprising link between West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreat and the growth of marine algae over the past 500,000 years.

One university, two marine research institutions, one shared goal: a healthy ocean. An interview with Katharina Pahnke, Director of the Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment, ICBM, and Helmut Hillebrand, Director of the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity,…

„DynaCom” aims to expand our understanding of biodiversity on islands. The German Research Foundation (DFG) is funding the project for another two years.

Geoscientist Sinikka Lennartz has been awarded the Lower Saxony Science Prize for Early Career Researchers. She translates microscopic processes in the oceans into mathematical equations – and incorporates them into global Earth System Models.

If krill swarms in Antarctica shrink, this will have immediate consequences for many animal species. A team led by scientist Bettina Meyer is proposing a new concept for sustainable management, in close cooperation with fisheries.

Pollutant levels in fish in the Wadden Sea are increasing. Researchers are developing a software tool that analyses the interactions between fish and pollutants and can be used for nature conservation projects.

A new review highlights how hydrothermal vents on the seafloor shape iron availability and influence the global oceanic element cycles. Researchers from Bremen and Oldenburg are involved. 

The global biodiversity targets adopted in 2022 are aligned with science and represent a major advance on the Aichi Targets adopted in 2010, an international research team reports in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

Biodiversity in the Wadden Sea has undergone a noticeable reorganisation since the middle of the last century, according to a new study. Researchers from Oldenburg and Groningen have analysed biodiversity using a holistic approach for the first time.

A new paper published in Science by a team including ecologist Iliana Baums urges regulatory reform to accelerate coral restoration using assisted gene flow – an essential step to safeguard the economic and ecologic services that reefs provide. 

A team led by marine researcher Oliver Wurl is travelling the Atlantic on the research vessel Meteor. Four team members talk about life on board, the top millimetre of the ocean and working with a television crew.

The German Research Foundation is funding the „DynaDeep” project by Oldenburg hydrogeologist Gudrun Massmann with around five million euros for a further four years. A large part of the research will take place on Spiekeroog.

Microbial ecosystems have tipping points where even small perturbations are enough to cause a collapse, according to a new study. Tom Clegg and Thilo Gross describe microbial communities as a network based on the exchange of metabolic by-products. 

Researchers led by Oscar Puebla have described a new species of fish in the Gulf of Mexico. The brightly patterned creature, Hypoplectrus espinosai, belongs to the hamlet group. The team published their findings in the journal Zootaxa.

What is the role of hydrothermal vents in the cycle of dissolved organic matter in the ocean? Researchers from the Universities of Bremen and Oldenburg have analysed samples from the Guaymas Basin in the Gulf of California.

For the first time, the most prestigious award for early-career researchers goes to an Oldenburg scientist: geoscientist Sinikka Lennartz receives the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize for her computational modelling of organic carbon in the oceans.