Nordic Marine Science Meeting 2026

Professor Lars Henrik Smedrud

Geophysical Institute, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, University of Bergen

Fjord to the People: Restoring and Reconnecting an Urban Fjord in Bergen, Norway

Bergen ocean city has a 20 m deep fjord as its heart – Store Lungegårdsvann. The inter-generational project Fjord to the People seeks to restore public engagement with this urban marine environment through collaboration between University of Bergen, the Municipality of Bergen, research institutes, local schools, the public Bergen Aquarium and Science Centre and private actors. The project aims to increase understanding and communication about the local fjord following decades of pollution and limited recreational use. Regular fieldwork in Store Lungegårdsvann has supported education in biodiversity, sustainability and oceanography. The Real Data measuring station provides a daily top-to-bottom series of temperature, salinity, oxygen, fluorescence, and turbidity, linking real-world observations with scientific techniques over time. Recent restoration efforts by the Municipality of Bergen, conducted through the Cleaner Harbour initiative, have included major reductions in sewage discharges and capping of contaminated sediments. Additional measures are being implemented to improve water circulation by redirecting freshwater inputs to deeper (denser and saltier) layers. However, precipitation-fed runoff from urban hills and mountains continues to introduce fecal bacteria, heavy metals, plastics, and flame-retardant compounds, affecting ecosystem health. Current activities include habitat enhancement using “green gravel,” acoustic tagging of migratory fish, surveillance of pollutants in sediments and fish, public dissemination of near-real-time water-column observations, AI-assisted photographic monitoring, and science communication through films and conferences. The fjord will onwards become a living laboratory where environmental restoration, research, education and public engagement are brought together, demonstrating how urban waters can be both rehabilitated and reconnected with the public.

Dr. Laura Tuomi

Finnish Meteorological Institute

Evolving marine observing and forecasting systems to increase our understanding of changing marine environment

The coastal seas are experiencing significant changes. In addition to the impacts of climate change and human pressures, the changing geopolitical landscape is introducing new challenges for maritime safety, critical infrastructure, and environmental monitoring. This presentation explores how marine observing and forecasting systems need to evolve to remain reliable and fit for purpose in an increasingly complex environment. It highlights the opportunities offered by new autonomous observing technologies to deepen our understanding of key physical and biogeochemical processes that affect the environmental state of the coastal seas. Particular attention will be given to integrated observing networks and new developments in forecasting, including AI and data-driven approaches. The importance of strengthened collaboration across disciplines, sectors, and national boundaries will also be discussed.

Professor Adam Martiny

Section for Ocean and technology, DTU Aqua, Denmark

From Genes to Global Biogeochemistry: Insights from Bio-GO-SHIP

GO-SHIP provides a global framework for repeat, high-quality observations of ocean physics and biogeochemistry, creating a unique record of how the ocean is changing. Bio-GO-SHIP extends this framework to marine ecosystems by adding coordinated measurements of microbial communities, genomic diversity, and biological function. In this keynote, I will show how phytoplankton adaptation can be used as a sensitive sensor of environmental change. By linking genomic and physiological signatures of nutrient stress to hydrography and biogeochemical conditions, we can reveal how organisms experience a changing ocean. These biological responses also provide new insight into the processes regulating carbon and nutrient cycles. Together, Bio-GO-SHIP connects ocean change, biological adaptation, and global biogeochemistry.

Associate Professor Lena van Giesen

Department of Biology, NTNU, Norway

Do what you can where you are with what you have- insights from cnidarian wisdom.

Navigating through marine environments, a vast and dynamic world full of complex information necessitates elaborate sense organs, capable of filtering and encoding relevant signals, and sophisticated motor output for appropriate responses. Being sessile, adult corals and anemones are exposed to changing environments without the means to relocate. Species dispersal is therefore restricted to the developmentally restricted larval life stage, during which animals are motile. However, how microscopic cnidarian larvae achieve reliable dispersal and conquest of novel habitats under time pressure and unpredictable environmental conditions is largely unknown. Recent findings from serval lines of research, including our lab, are beginning to illuminate the astonishing mechanisms that have evolved in order to make this endeavor successful for the last ≈550 million years.

Dr. Maria Mancilla Garcia, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University

Contested Coastlines: How Conflicting Narratives and Institutional Friction Drive Social-Ecological Feedbacks

Dr. Leon Chafik

Department of Meteorology, Stockholm University

What’s up with the AMOC? What three decades of direct observations tell us about its state.

Whether the AMOC is weakening remains one of the most debated questions in climate science, yet much of the evidence for a decline is indirect, resting on surface temperature fingerprints and paleoceanographic reconstructions. Direct transport measurements exist at only a few latitudes and mostly span two decades or less. The Greenland–Scotland Ridge is an exception. The warm Atlantic inflow to the Nordic Seas and the dense overflow returning southward have both been monitored for close to three decades, spanning a period of pronounced hydrographic change. In this talk I revisit these records to show how they capture the AMOC’s branches, what they reveal, and what this means for the wider debate about an AMOC decline.

Professor Christoph Humborg

and Professor Alf Norkko

Baltic Sea Science Centre, Stockholm University and Tvärminne Zoological Station, University of Helsinki

Beyond blue carbon: biodiversity and ecosystem state regulate coastal climate feedbacks

Coastal ecosystems are promoted as climate solutions because they capture and store ”blue carbon”. This is important, but stocks and burial rates alone do not reveal net cooling. Carbon may be retained, remineralised, exported or resuspended, while CH4, N2O and other short-lived climate forcers such as volatile organic carbon add pathways often omitted from assessment. Their balance varies with ecosystem condition, disturbance, and recovery. Drawing on the CoastClim perspective, we reframe coastal ecosystems as state-dependent climate regulators. We argue that ecosystem state, rather than habitat identity alone, should be the central unit of coastal climate assessment. Biodiversity should be treated as a mechanism, not simply as a co-benefit. Species composition, functional traits, body-size structure, trophic organisation and microbial communities influence carbon turnover, sediment oxygenation, redox conditions, methane production and oxidation, and recovery. These controls are especially relevant in Nordic coastal systems, where seasonality, eutrophication, hypoxia, heatwaves and storms can cause large shifts in climate-relevant processes.

As a case study of this CH4 pathway, we draw on continuous sea–air CH4 flux observations collected over 15 years across the Baltic Sea. Emissions are highest, and most undersampled, in shallow nearshore waters, declining with depth and distance from shore to reveal a characteristic CH4 compensation boundary beyond which coastal waters shift from net sources to weaker emitters or sinks. Set against the broader coastal carbon budget and upscaled to national territorial waters, these fluxes are large enough to warrant inclusion in national greenhouse-gas inventories and climate reporting frameworks.

We propose a BIO–GEO–GHG/SLCF framework linking biological structure with sediment biogeochemistry, greenhouse-gas exchange and short-lived climate forcers. It extends assessment across vegetated habitats, non-vegetated sediments, pelagic realm and depositional basins as connected seascapes. Moving from habitat inventories to ecosystem-state trajectories can improve monitoring, restoration evaluation and decision support. The key question is not only where carbon is stored, but where and when coastal ecosystems cool or warm the climate, and how management can shift that balance.