The OceanICU Janus moment!
Janus: the mythical Roman legend symbolising beginnings, transitions, time and duality was the guiding theme for the OceanICU third annual meeting held on the banks of the Baltic at the headquarters of our partner IO PAN. For the first time since the kick-off meeting, members of the 30 partner consortium gathered in person for a robust programme of science presentations, poster talks, workshops, a look at project results, a thrilling debate and important discussions around supporting and mentoring early career researchers.
The event marked the mid-point of the project, and as the theme of Janus implies, it was the ideal time to look back and take stock of the excellent work that has been achieved to date, synthesise our findings and determine how to carefully pivot towards achieving a meaningful impact through the dissemination of our results for the benefit of the science community, the blue economy industry, policy and wider society.
Highlights of the action packed week included:
Poster Exhibition
There were 26 posters presented by early career scientists, focusing on various aspects of OceanICU’s investigation into better understanding ocean carbon. Topics ranged from cold water corals, zooplankton, deep-sea mining, bottom trawling, fish carbon, modelling and more. Team members had the opportunity to first present their work to the plenary and then to discuss with individuals and groups during a breakout session.
The AM 2025 Debate: Championing Perspectives on an IOCR key question
The OceanICU consortium comprises an impressive pedigree of multi-disciplined scientific excellence, therefore with many experts gathered for the Annual Meeting in Sopot, we thought it a good setting to unpack one of the IOCR’s key questions: Will the ocean uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide continue primarily as an abiotic process? By sharing or adopting various perspectives, the panellist presented and argued their point of view to influence each other and the audience, while a Mentimeter survey kept track. Insights, agreements, disagreements, and varying levels of passion abounded, not only from the presenters but also from the audience. Despite good efforts, the debate ended not with a victor but with consensus around the fact that this is a highly complex issue, involving many processes and a lot more discussion and debating is needed before an answer can be achieved.
The perspectives and topics argued included:
🔹 Abiotic processes matter much more for climate change, BCP perturbations minimal
🐠 Fish carbon, past and evolving view on role of fish in carbon sequestration, impact of fisheries on carbon sequestration
📈 BCP valuation, key perspective from recent publication🧬 Biology enhances carbon uptake, key perspective from recent publication
🔹 How can/does the BCP change with climate? Future projections from different models, storage of soft tissue carbon
👀 Observed changes in the strength of the biological carbon pump
The debate was organised and moderated by Natayla Gallo (NORCE).
The panelists were: Judith Hauck (AWI), Stephanie Henson (NOC), Siv Lauvset, Richard Sanders, and Jerry Tijputra (NORCE), Gäel Mariani and Fabio Berzaghi (WMU) and Filippa Fransner (UiB).
Workshops
There were multiple breakout sessions through the week, highlights include:
Metrics
Led by Iris Kriest (GEOMAR): Metrics are important for quantifying a particular process in the biological pump to ensure that comparisons of multiple processes undertaken by different groups have common currencies. This workshop was the culmination of three online workshops and was in support of deliverable D6.3.
Ocean System Pathways (OSP)
Led by Natalya Galo (NORCE), the workshop focused on OSPs as an extension of the Shared Socioeconomic pathways, which attempt to predict the complexities of climate mitigation and adaptation under different evolutions of human society that are plausible. The OSPs will extend this to the ocean to try to figure out likely trajectories of human exploitation of ocean resources under a similar range of societal evolutions. During the workshop, consortium members participated in a guided exercise in developing and working with the five OSPs.
KPI Clusters
Led by Richard Sanders (NORCE), the original 28 KPIs in the project have been organised into six clusters (see below). These breakout sessions focused on developing the best plan around the delivery of the KPIs by identifying recipient stakeholders, defining outputs and materials, and identifying dissemination channels and actions.
Cluster 1: “Biology in C Cycle”
Cluster 2 “Global C Cycle”
Cluster 3 “Climate Policy”
Cluster 4 “Knowledge Gaps”
Cluster 5 “Industrial Impacts”
Cluster 6 “Coastal Carbon”
Early Career Researcher Session
ECRs play a key role in the OceanICU community, working with mentors at research institutes across Europe to improve our understanding of the ocean carbon process. For the third and final day of the Annual Meeting, we put the spotlight on this talented and hardworking group with a session to hear about their exciting work, and a networking meeting with the consortium’s senior scientists. This forum offered a supportive environment to discuss issues, such as the common and persistent pressures to secure funding, find long-term contracts and publish papers. Seasoned insights and advice were offered as well as a recognition that there must be support across the generations, there must be open-dialogue and mutual respect. Many ECRs expressed appreciation for the OceanICU community’s commitment to supporting PhD students and post-docs.
The programme held many more exciting highlights, particularly around the sharing of results and ongoing work. There was truly never a dull moment.
An Ocean of Thanks to our partners at the Institute of Oceanology Polish Academy of Sciences – Maciej Telszewski and Dominik Krzymiński – for hosting us, for the incredible hospitality and flawless event management.