“We want to be the best graduate school for Polar- and Marine Research in the world and that is why we want to know your opinion about how we are doing” – with these words Prof. Jelle Bijma, spokesman of the Helmholtz Graduate School POLMAR welcomed a team of experts, that came to Bremerhaven to evaluate the programme for postgraduates on January 15, 2013. In several short lectures, a poster session, discussions and many personal talks with POLMAR members and officials the evaluators from different research institutions and the Helmholtz association’s head office collected valuable information about the content, goals and methods of the POLMAR school.

more about the evaluation

see also @AWI no. 10

Thanks to all members and colleagues for their help and active participation in the successful midterm review of POLMAR!

During their PhD time, several POLMAR students take the chance to participate in expeditions to the Arctic or the Antarctic or attend national and international conferences or workshops. Besides the challenge of working under extreme conditions such as low temperature or limited working spaces on research platforms, the learning of new scientific methods and the opportunity to discuss scientific results with colleagues from all over the world make such activities an unforgettable experience. Additionally, the social and intercultural experience broadens the view and may lead to long lasting friendships and networks. International experiences remain indispensible for being successful in the scientific community. POLMAR therefore strongly recommends, encourages and financially supports applications for participating in international conferences, workshops or seminars that are related to the respective PhD project. In the following there will be provided some short reports of POLMAR students on recent activities.

My name is "Santa" Mario, and I am just in the middle of my Phd project called “Sea-Ice Mass Balance Influenced by Ice Shelves” (acronym SIMBIS).

I have been through 1.5 years of several highs and lows, but right now I am privileged to enjoy the highlight of my work: a two-month field campaign at AWI’s Neumayer III station on the Ekström Ice Shelf. I am the leader of a group of four scientists/technicians, investigating the physics of Antarctic sea ice and its snow cover. The immobile sea ice on the nearby Atka Bay exhibits some characteristics unique to the Antarctic and is an ideal natural laboratory to conduct sea-ice research. We focus on two aspects: first, the thick snow cover, which modifies sea-ice mass- and energy balance and heavily influences remote sensing techniques. Second, we investigate the phenomenon of huge amounts of rising ice crystals, which form in the water column during ice-shelf melting at depths. These ice platelets accumulate beneath the sea-ice cover, supporting huge amounts of biomass.
We use a variety of methods, from geophysics over oceanography to meteorology and biology, to get a better picture of the different processes here at Atka Bay. These include for example electromagnetic methods to determine sea-ice thickness, spectral radiation measurements and CTD profiles under the sea ice, while our under-ice cameras reveal the beauty of this strange world. More basic methods comprise snow pits, ice-core drillings and filtration of chlorophyll.
We determined the dense layer of loose crystals to be up to ten meters in thickness, while myriads of organisms gather between them. With our work we hope to contribute at least a small piece in the puzzle of Antarctica’s role in the climate system.
This project is funded by the German Research Council (DFG) in its priority program “Antarctic Research with comparative investigations in Arctic ice areas” (SPP1158, NI 1092/2) and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar- and Marine Research. I am grateful to POLMAR for their support, especially the invaluable courses which helped me to get in contact with other researchers and to prepare this expedition.

In the first year of my PhD studies I took part in a 6 weeks expedition to Spitsbergen to perform ecophysiological investigations on my study organisms: Krill in the fjords of West-Spitsbergen as indicators of climate change. As krill are sensitive organisms and cannot be kept in the AWI home laboratories, I rely on expeditions during which I can perform experiments and (physiological) measurements on live specimens. My journey started at the end of July 2012 in Longyearbyen (Spitsbergen) from where I joined a 2 weeks research cruise on board the polish RV Oceania to the fjords southwest of Spitsbergen before I left ship at AWIPEV station Ny Ålesund. On board I did respiration measurements and collected animal samples for later analysis at AWI. I really enjoyed the polish hospitality and the nice collaboration, which made the cruise an unforgettable (and also adventurous) experience. At the AWIPEV Research Base I was impressed by the convenient working conditions, which were amongst others access to 1) the KingsBay Marine Lab and all its equipment, 2) temperate filtered sea water directly from the tap, 3) cool rooms for animal maintenance with flow through system and last but not least 4) guaranteed krill supply every second day thanks to Vidar, captain of the station boat Teisten. Thus, additionally to the work I also did on RV Oceania, I was able to conduct a long-term experiment over the whole 4 weeks stay as well as an interdisciplinary experiment with our “krill-colleagues” from SB Roscoff (France). Consequently, the possibility to participate in the research cruise in connection with the stay at the AWIPEV station was a real benefit for my PhD studies. I collected heaps of data and had a lot of fun during my work as well as along with it.

Within our PhD thesis we spent 3 months at the Sven Lovén Centre for Marine Sciences in Kristineberg, Sweden to investigate the impacts of climate change on cod. As it is very difficult to catch enough cod in german coastal waters during early spring, we went to work were the fish is at this time of the year. Due to the perfect infrastructure at the station including direct seawater access and a temperature controlled flow - through system we had the possibility to realize an extensive setup with various combinations of different temperature and pH conditions. Our stay was very successful, we were able to conduct growth experiments, respiration measurements and took a full set of 1400 tissue samples home for further analyses. Working in Sweden was a very good experience, we were able to built up important cooperations with swedish scientists, met a lot of nice people and spent three months in one of the most beautiful landscapes of Sweden. And last but not least: we learned how to cook the original swedish Köttbullar.