9-12 October 2023 – The European Inland Fisheries and Aquaculture Advisory Commission (EIFAAC), the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) and the ICES Working Group on Eel (WGEEL) met in Helsinki, Finland this year. Caroline Durif was appointed chair of WGEEL in January 2023 along with Jan-Dag Pohlmann. Thirty-three participants gathered to share their expertise and provide the scientific …

11-14 September 2023 – Several members of the team were in Bilbao, Spain for ICES ASC 2023. Alessandro Cresci presented his work, “Effects of low-frequency continuous noise on behaviour of cod larvae (Gadus morhua) in situ” in the session on “Ecosystem science needed to support a new era of offshore marine renewable energy“. Caroline Durif participated in WGEEL meetings and …

June 2023 – Do wrasse use individual recognition in mate choice and social interactions? This question is currently being explored in a field experiment involving Ben Ellis, Tonje Sørdalen, Anne Berit Skiftesvik, Torkel Larsen, Noan le Goff (B.Sc. student from Université Bretagne Sud), Kim T. Halvorsen and our team. Using our pit-telemetry system on a corkwing wrasse nest colony in …

30 May – 1 June 2023 – Howard Browman and Jan Pechenik were at ICES headquarters in Copenhagen where they co-taught an ICES training course on scientific writing and publishing. Learn more about the course HERE.

May 2023 – Caroline Durif joined the Norwegian Fisheries Directorate to collect data from lumpfish landings. These data will be used to estimate the conversion factor used to calculate a number of fish landed from the volume of roe collected by fishers. The team sampled lumpfish caught on the beautiful island of Senja in Troms og Finmark, Norway.

May 2023 – Alessandro Cresci and the team conducted an experiment – using drifting in situ chambers – to assess the distance at which cod larvae respond to the noise generated by operating offshore wind turbines as part of our ongoing project “Assessing the effects of offshore wind turbine facilities on fish early life stages“. See stories about this project …

3-22 April 2023 – The team had a lot of visitors during this period to work on two projects; CRISPRESIST and NOLICE. The overall aim of these projects is to identify naturally produced compounds that are associated with Atlantic salmon susceptibility and resistance to parasitic sea lice and to develop tools that can be applied to boost Atlantic salmon resistance …

14 March 2023: A new article theme set was published today in ICES Journal of Marine Science – Co-designing science for the ocean we want. Howard Browman was a co-editor of the collection, and a co-author of the introductory article. Co-design is a central principle of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. Cartoon by Bas Köhler.

8 March 2023 – Howard Browman presented a lecture – remotely via ZOOM – on “Navigating the increasingly complex and treacherous scientific publishing landscape” to the British Antarctic Survey and the Natural Environment Research Council, UK. Abstract of the talkMy first article was published in 1986. The landscape of scientific publishing was much simpler then, and slower. It was not …

23 February 2023 – The team – Caroline Durif, Reidun Bjelland, Alessandro Cresci, Anne Berit Skiftesvik and Howard Browman – conducted an experiment to determine the light level threshold for swimming and feeding behaviour in sandeel (Ammodytes marinus) larvae and their sensitivity to sub-lethal exposure of crude oil. Additional experiments will be conducted to study the behaviour of sandeel when …

9 December 2022 – Howard Browman presented a seminar, “Fake news: the real life dangers of over-interpreting your results in an alternative facts world”, to the University of Texas at Austin’s Marine Science Institute. The seminar was delivered remotely on ZOOM. Howard discussed recent retractions of articles in marine science related to ocean acidification and microplastic (due to professional misconduct/malfeasance) …

29 November 2022 – Howard Browman and Matt Hodgkinson delivered a one day workshop for journal editors on publication ethics at the 17th MUNIN Conference on Scholarly Publishing. The workshop was sponsored-supported by the Committee on Publication Ethics and the MUNIN Conference.

28 November 2022 – Alessandro Cresci was invited to the University of Oldenburg, Germany, to give a talk as guest scientist. Alessandro was invited by Professor Gabriele Gerlach and met with scientists and students from the “Magnetoreception and Navigation in Vertebrates” and the “Biodiversity and Evolution of Animals” research groups. His talk was entitled “Unraveling larval dispersal in marine fish, …

21 November 2022 – Researchers at Stanford University have published a ranking of the most influential researchers in the world within their disciplines (newly updated for 2022 – see Table 1 authors-career, HERE). The analysis identifies the top two percent of world-leading researchers – Howard Browman is amongst those listed in the field of fisheries. Read a brief story about …

1 November 2022 – Caroline Durif , along with IMR colleagues Prescilla Perrichon and Elin Sørhus, went out to collect sandeel (Ammodytes marinus) broodstock off Karmøy. They were caught using a bottom trawl that dredged sand at around 50 m. In Norway, sandeel spawn in early January. They spend most of their time buried in the sand but come out …