27 November 2025 – Caroline Durif talks about the European eel on the BBC’s The Infinite Monkey Cage podcast. Listen to the podcast HERE. The BBC description of the podcast: Fishing rods at the ready, Brian Cox and Robin Ince attempt to reel in a creature that has baffled scientists since Aristotle: the eel. Wriggling in to help them uncover …
The NFR-funded ECOLUMP project reaches another milestone!
26 September 2025. The NFR-funded ECOLUMP project (see HERE and scroll down until you get to a description of this project) reaches another milestone! The team completed a field experiment to explore whether the orientation behavior of juvenile lumpfish varies according to the spawning location, and whether their behavior is inherited from their parents. The team observed the behavior of …
Howard Browman receives the ICES Outstanding Achievement Award
15 September 2025 – Howard Browman was presented with the ICES Outstanding Achievement Award at the ICES Annual Science Conference in Klaipeda, Lithuania. Read the laudatios HERE and HERE. It was wonderful to have so many members of our team present to help celebrate: Anne Berit Skiftesvik, Caroline Durif, Alessandro Cresci, Kim Halvorsen, Tonje Knutsen Sørdalen and Ben Ellis.You can …
The team had an impressive presence at the ICES Annual Science Conference
15-18 September 2025 – The team had a major presence at the ICES Annual Science Conference in Klaipeda, Lithuania, 15-18 September 2025. Here are the abstracts that were presented. Durif, C.M.F., R. Bjelland, P. Perrichon, H.I. Browman, A. Cresci, E. Johnsen, T. Larsen, A.B. Skiftesvik & E. Sørhus. Effect of oil and light intensity on the feeding behavior of lesser …
The team acquires a major piece of equipment
25 August 2025 – The research team has acquired a state-of-the-art low-frequency sound projector for underwater studies: the C-BASS M72-50, manufactured by GeoSpectrum Technologies Inc. (Canada). This instrument is capable of reproducing single and combined tones, frequency-modulated sweeps, communication signals, as well as white or shaped noise at high intensity. The projector will be used to expose marine organisms to …
The team’s work is presented at the 2025 Larval Fish Conference
17 June 2025 – Ph.D. student Gauthier Felix Lorillard presented two pieces of work at the 48th Larval Fish Conference in Quebec City: Lorillard, G.F., C.M.F. Durif, C. Guillebon, A. Cresci, A.B. Skiftesvik, H.I. Browman, R. Bjelland, A. Thorsen, G. Zhang, L. Doksæter Sivle & P. Perrichon. Effect of electromagnetic fields on the fertilization success and embryonic development of Atlantic …
Howard Browman is amongst the world’s top 2% of scientists in his subject area discipline
4 May 2025 – Researchers at Stanford University have produced a ranking of the top researchers in the world within their subject area disciplines – see HERE. Based on standardised data on citations, h-index, and a wide range of bibliometric indicators, this list identifies the world’s leading researchers, representing approximately 2% of all scientists worldwide. The excel sheets containing the …
What colours do sandeel see?
1-7 April 2025 – Our long-time (27 years!) collaborator Ellis Loew was with us at Austevoll. His visit was supported by the KNOWSANDEEL project. He worked with the team to characterize the spectral sensitivity of the eyes of sandeel from larvae through juveniles to adults using the microspectrophotometer that he built for us. Preliminary results indicate that all stages have …
Effects of anthropogenic electromagnetic fields used for subsurface oil and gas exploration on the early development of Atlantic haddock
12 December 2024 – Our latest research conducted at the Institute of Marine Research (IMR), Norway exploring the impacts of methods used for subsea oil exploration on the early life stages of fish was just published in Marine Pollution Bulletin (see below)! Controlled-source electromagnetics (CSEM) uses low-frequency (0.1–10 Hz) electromagnetic fields to discover oil reservoirs laying underneath the sea floor. This …
Team retreat at Flødevigen
25-28 November 2024 – The annual team retreat was held at Flødevigen. Most of the team, and associated colleagues, participated: Torkel Larsen, Ben Ellis, Marthe Stendal, Alessandro Cresci, Kim Halvorsen, Anne Berit Skiftesvik, Caroline Durif, Howard Browman, Rolf Korneliussen, Tonje Sørdalen, James Poling, Guosong Zhang and Reidun Bjelland. Over four days, we shared good meals, listened to updates on our …
KNOWSANDEEL 3.0 kickoff meeting
12-13 November 2024 – Caroline, Anne Berit, Reidun, Alessandro and Howard participated in the KNOWSANDEEL 3.0 kickoff meeting! The team is contributing to the project work package about larval dispersal mechanisms and its modelling. The hashtag#KnowSandeel project led by the Institute of Marine Research (IMR), Norway and funded by Norges forskningsråd (The Research Council of Norway) has officially started! Lesser …
ECOLUMP project selected as a UNESCO Ocean Decade Action
22 October 2024 – Caroline Durif‘s Research Council of Norway funded project, Characterizing the migratory strategies of Atlantic lumpfish to improve stock assessment of this commercially important species (ECOLUMP), has been selected as a UNESCO Ocean Decade Action – see here.
Howard and Tonje participated in the ICES Annual Science Conference in Gateshead-Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
8-12 September – Howard Browman and Tonje Knutsen Sørdalen participated in the ICES Annual Science Conference. Howard led a workshop for early career researchers on scientific publishing and Tonje presented her work on “Decoding female mimicry in a fish using deep learning”.
Collaborators Suzanne Alonzo and Holly Kindsvater visit the team at Flødevigen for a data-analysis workshop on wrasse mating behavior
19 – 23 August 2024 – Last week, our collaborators Suzanne Alonzo and Holly Kindsvater visited our team in Flødevigen – Kim Halvorsen, Tonje Knutsen Sørdalen and Torkel Larsen – for a four day workshop. The goal was to develop methods for inferring mating patterns and sexual selection from PIT-telemetry data collected on the corkwing wrasse spawning ground in Austevoll. …
The world’s oldest ballan wrasse
24 May 2024 – Marthe Ruud Stendal, a Ph.D. student in the team, reports on a new world record: a 34 year old ballan wrasse. Read more about it HERE (in Norwegian, but you can use the google translate tool).