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The world produces more than 460 million tons of plastic every year. Plastics are made from a wide variety of chemicals and polymers that are almost exclusively derived from fossil fuels. When they end up in the environment, they can cause lasting damage to us humans, the climate and our ecosystems. Plastics can now be found in even the remotest parts of our planet and throughout the human body. One approach currently being advocated as a way out of the crisis is plastic credits. An international consortium of experts, led by Sangcheol Moon of the…

On 29 May 2025, the Polarstern research vessel set sail from Bremerhaven for the Arctic. The destination of the 95 expedition participants, led by the Alfred Wegener Institute, is the AWI Hausgarten, a long-term observatory situated between Svalbard and Greenland. There they will investigate how the ecosystems of the Arctic deep sea are reacting to changing environmental conditions as a result of rapid climate change. The month-long expedition, which is scheduled to finish in Tromsø, Norway, at the end of June, will focus on benthic and plankton…

Temperatures around the world continue to rise – and the North Sea is no exception. Yet, in addition to this gradual warming, increasingly frequent and intense heat events also have consequences for marine organisms. Researchers at the Marine Station Helgoland, a research facility of the Alfred Wegener Institute, have quantified the frequency and intensity of these heatwaves along with their repercussions for plankton. They have also conducted an experiment that exposed the North Sea plankton community to different future warmer scenarios, both with and…

From 1 May 2025, Prof. Dr. Maarten Boersma will step up as Acting Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute. As a biologist, he has been conducting research, predominantly at the Helgoland and Sylt stations, since 2001, since 2015 as section head. He has been on the AWI Board of Directors since summer 2024. Maarten Boersma succeeds Prof. Dr. Antje Boetius, who takes up the position of President of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in California.

The winter growth period for sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is now over, with levels at a record low. The winter ice extent on 21 March 2025 was lower than at any time since continuous satellite recording began in 1979. At 14.45 million square kilometres, winter sea ice cover is over a million square kilometres below the long-term average. As in February 2025, average Arctic sea ice cover remained at an all-time low for the entire month of March, equalling the previous low set in 2017. 

The most detailed map of the landscape under the Antarctic ice sheet to date has been created by a team of international scientists under the Head of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and with the participation of the Alfred Wegener Institute. The map, called Bedmap3, covers more than six decades of survey data collected by aeroplanes, satellites, ships and even dogsleds. The results will be published this week in the journal Scientific Data.

On Tuesday, 18 February 2025 as part of a specialist appointment, Federal Minister of Research Cem Özdemir visited the thyssenkrupp Marine Systems shipyard in Wismar. There, he was informed about the current state of construction regarding the new research icebreaker Polarstern for the Alfred Wegener Institute. Shortly before Christmas 2024, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, with support from the Budget Committee of the German Bundestag, had approved the award of contract. With Bettina Martin, Minister of Science for the Federal State of…

Countless tiny icequakes occur deep inside ice streams, as an international research team has been able to demonstrate for the first time. This allows the flow of the ice streams and the associated change in sea level to be estimated more precisely. The quakes are responsible for the fact that ice streams also move with a continuous stick-slip motion and not only like viscous honey as previously considered. The underlying seismic data from inside the NEGIS ice stream in north-east Greenland was recorded by researchers in a 2,665-metre-deep borehole using…

Global warming is producing a rapid loss of plant species – according to estimates, roughly 600 plant species have died out since 1750 – twice the number of animal species lost. But which species are hit hardest? And how does altered biodiversity actually affect interactions between plants? Experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute have tackled these questions and, in two recent studies, presented the answers they found buried in the past: using fragments of plant genetic material (DNA) deposited in lake sediments, they were able to gain new insights…

Shrimp in European supermarkets is almost exclusively sourced from farms outside the EU - often without any proof that it has been farmed in a welfare-compliant way. In the ShrimpWiz project, a consortium led by the Alfred Wegener Institute in cooperation with the company Oceanloop is investigating how indoor shrimp farming can be established in Europe and around the world that guarantees animal welfare and is economically viable for companies. They are using computer vision to automatically examine and care for the animals.