Happy Kelpmas
As we move towards the festive season, there is a final piece of good news from the GEcoKelp team - we have successfully seeded L. hyperborea on to Green Gravel in the aquarium, with baby kelp visible under the microscope. We will keep monitoring kelp growth over the next few months before outplanting them in the field.
Check back with us in 2025 for more updates on the kelp babies and news from our adventures including Thomas and Karen's trip to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP) in Baku, Azerbaijan, Hannah's participation in the Arctic Coastal Biodiversity Observation Network (ARC-BON) workshop in Svalbard, alongside team field trips to Runde, conferences in Canada and France, and multiple laboratory experiments!​​​
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Happy Holidays & All The Best For 2025
The GEcoKelp Team
Trip to Tromsø -Havforskermøtet 24
From 25-27th November, a group of researchers from the IMR Station at Flødevigen including Hannah and Karine from GecoKelp team along with members of the NORSE project headed to Tromsø for the Annual meeting of the Norwegian Association of Marine Scientists (Havforskermøtet). The theme of the meeting was "Effects of climate change and climate mitigation measures on marine ecosystems".
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Upon arriving the team had an evening to explore the snowy streets of Tromsø, with the number of Christmas lights making it feel like a winter wonderland. The following two days consisted of interesting panel discussions on offshore wind and ocean warming impacts, and a diverse array of presentations from researchers and industry representatives covering topics from ocean mapping, copepods, deep sea mining, blue carbon and Arctic ecosystems. Collectively the presentations provided a great overview of the research being undertaken along the Norwegian coast, There was also a poster presentation session in which Hannah gave an overview of the GEcoKelp project and some of the initial findings from Rowan's MSc and Grace's PhD research - check out the poster here.
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The coffee and lunch breaks provided great opportunities to chat with other conference participants, allowing ideas to be shared and networks to be built. There was also a delicious conference dinner, as well as a Norwegian Christmas dinner to enjoy! Overall the conference was a great experience and the team are looking forward to returning to Tromsø for fieldwork in the future, and hosting Havforskermøtet 2025 in southern Norway.
Boating Bonanza
Fresh of a flight from Australia, GEcoKelp post doc Hannah along with WP co-lead Karine have undertaken a 2-day course at IMR Station at Flødevigen to get their Norwegian boat driving licenses (Båtførerprøven) and VHF radio certificates.
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After a quick introduction to the IMR boats, they will be ready to head out on GEcoKelp field adventures in Spring/Summer 2025!​
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GEcoKelp goes Global
November 2014 saw GEcoKelp post doc Hannah embark on an exciting trip down under where she was able to catch up with members of the GEcoKelp team based at the University of Western Australia (Thomas, Karen, Antoine, Grace), as well as old and new members of the BlueARC team who have/will visit IMR Station at Flødevigen (Thomas, Karen, Albert, Sidsel).
The trip started off with the annual Wernberg Lab retreat at Jurian Bay that brought together over 25 people researching diverse, kelp-related topics. This was a great opportunity to see what everyone was working on, to celebrate successes and plan/collaborate into the future. During the retreat, the team also undertook a snorkelling bioblitz on the Great Southern Reef, at a site dominated by the kelp Ecklonia radiata. All together, the retreat provided a great insight into the structure of and opportunities within the lab group (including long term monitoring), as well as a chance to explore some local beaches and kelp forests, and learn some new boat mechanic skills.
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The second week of the trip was spent in Perth and was an opportunity to check out the facilities on the UWA campus and at the Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre at Watermans Bay. The visit to Watermans Bay was particularly insightful and provided an insight into how to design some of the aquarium facilities in Norway, and included a sneak peek at their Green Gravel work. During this week, many conversations about ongoing and future collaborations between the Norway and Australia team were had, a grant proposal was submitted, the writing of a book chapter was completed, and plans for GEcoKelp 2025 were outlined! Not bad for a weeks work right?​
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There was even a little bit of time spare to exploring Perth center, Fremantle, Bold Park and Scarborough,, a trip to the Salt market for some outdoor Pilates, a swim and some shopping, and a kangaroo steak for dinner before jetting back to Norway.
Hotplate Heaven
Its been an exciting week for the GEcoKelp team at the IMR Station at Flødevigen following the arrival of the much anticipated experimental 'hotplates'. These shiny new experimental units were based off a design by Dr Reina Veenhof and will be used in early 2025 for heatwave experiments.
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There is a little more shopping to do before the units azre fully operational, but stay tuned to find out how we get on!​
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G'day Grace
It was a busy few weeks IMR Station at Flødevigen for Grace, a visiting PhD student from the University of Western Australia. For the final chapter of her PhD research, and during her first visit to Europe, Grace ran an aquarium experiment to investigate nutrient uptake dynamics in two kelp species (L. hyperborea and S. latissima) under various environmental conditions including different temperatures (simulating ocean warming) and light levels (simulating coastal darkening), in filtered seawater and seawater containing phytoplankton.
Due to the complexity of the experimental design and the number of replicates required, the experiment was run continuously over a 2-week period, with at least 3x experimental runs with a minimum of 8 replicates per run - the phrase EAT, SLEEP, EXPERIMENT, REPEAT was definitely true, with the team spending long hours in the aquarium hall running the experiment, processing samples, acclimating kelp for future runs and labeling what seemed like millions of tubes, bags and pots. Through collaborations with a team of researchers at IMR, seawater, tissue and plankton samples will be processed, while the data that was available instantaneously will be used by Antonia for her MSc thesis.
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Outside of her experiment, Grace also had the opportunity to visit Arendal and Oslo, became an expert in foraging mushrooms and embraced Norwegian sauna culture :) She will be returning in Spring to re-run the experiment to look at variation across spatio-temporal scales.
Time lapse video of an experimental run for Grace's experiment (3x runs were done each day!).
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Autumn madness!
The kelp reproductive season is upon us and that only means one thing -Antoine is over from Australia and working with Hannah and Tone to establish some kelp cultures for use in future experiments.
The team successfully collected reproductive specimens of L. digitata and L. hyperborea. These were processed for genetics before we induced sporulation. While this sounds like a simple task, it has kelp the team busy making red light boxes and culture media and cleaning the cultures to remove and stoaway diatoms etc. The cultures are being kept under red light in an incubator and photographed regularly while they wait for Antoine to return in spring.
At the same time, Thomas, Karen and the smallest member of the GEcoKelp team visited IMR to discuss research plans and logistics for 2025 - this also included a delicious, typically Norwegian meal of Reindeer!​
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Antonia's Autumnal Heatwave
Its a busy Autumn for the GEcoKelp team with national and international students visiting the IMR Station at Flødevigen to undertake aquarium experiments and talk about all things kelp!
Antonia, an MSc student from the University of Agder has teamed up with seagrass researchers on the NORSE project run a pilot experiment in the outdoor mesocosms at the IMR Station at Flødevigen. The experiment aims to investigate the influence of coastal darkening and marine heatwaves on juvenile kelp (Laminaria hyperborea and Saccharina latissima) and involves measuring kelp growth, biomass and pigmentation.
Due to extremely windy conditions, the outdoor mesocosms were sealed for the duration of the experiment meaning weekly monitoring was not possible. After one-month, the mesocosms were opened and we found that all the kelp in the heatwave treatment had disappeared, all that was left were the zip tie markers! While this isn't ideal for the research project, it demonstrates that science does not always go to plan.
We have re-framed Antonia's project and she will now plans to assisting Grace, a visiting PhD student from the University of Western Australia with her upcoming research.
Punching for Pilot Experiments - September 2024
​Tone and Hannah, have been busy in Flødevigen this week setting up pilot experiments to look at the growth and reproduction of Laminaria hyperborea that have been kept on lines on the jetty or in the aquarium. Rather than working with whole kelp individuals, they have been punching discs in sections of the blade. These discs are being kelp in a culture medium in a light and temperature chamber and will be monitored over the next few weeks by the GEcoKelp team. If successful, this pilot experiment might provide a resource-effective means of conducting experiments on this kelp species over the coming years.
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Make sure you come back to see what that found.
Fieldwork in Svalbard - May 24
In May 2024, members of the GEcoKelp team joined researchers from the BlueARC project led by Dr. Karen Filbee-Dexter to undertake kelp forest research in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. Svalbard's coastal zone is changing rapidly with climate change and understanding the consequences of these changes on high-Arctic kelp forests is of paramount importance.
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The team undertook extensive scientific diving in chilly conditions to monitor kelp forests around Svalbard, and collect samples of several kelp species for morphology and genetic analyses. More information on the trip can be found on the Norsk Polarinstitutt and the UWA's websites.
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Video of Prof. Thomas Wernberg explaining the importance of Arctic kelp forests and the work of the BlueARC project.
GEcoKelp Kick Off Meeting in Runde - May 2023
The GEcoKelp project got underway in May 2023 with a kick off meeting at Runde Miljøsenter, located on the small island of Runde in western Norway.
Many members of the GEcoKelp team joined the meeting to start planning out the research activities that will take place over the next few years. There were also several opportunities to head out on the research vessel around the island where the dive team were able to hop in the water and collect the first batch of kelp samples for morphology measurements and genetic analyses!
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The team are hoping to head back to Runde for more fieldwork in the second year of the project so stay tuned for more photos from this beautiful island!
