Archive of News and Press Releases
Kidnapping in the Antarctic animal world?
Pteropods or sea snails, also called sea angels, produce chemical deterrents to ward off predators, and some species of amphipods take advantage of this by carrying pteropods piggyback to gain protection from their voracious predators. There is no recognisable benefit for the pteropod. On the contrary they starve: captured between the amphipod’s legs they are unable to feed. Biologists working with Dr Charlotte Havermans at the Alfred Wegener Institute have investigated this phenomenon as part of a cooperation project with the University of Bremen. In…
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Antje Boetius at PMC Conference
AWI director talks about „Ecological aspects of deep sea mining“ at Conference on Progress in Marine Conservation in Stralsund.
Last work in the northeastern Greenland Sea in the final week of the cruise
After returning to the part of the Wandel Sea just off the coast of Kronprins Christian Land, the northeasternmost point of Greenland, station work started including heat flow measurements and sediment sampling (box corer and gravity corer).
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Iceland's Ambassador Martin Eyjolfsson at the AWI
The Ambassador visits the AWI today to talk about the developments of the Arctic region. Photo: Volker Rachold (German Arctic Office), Karsten Wurr (AWI), Antje Boetius (AWI), Martin Eyjolfsson (Ambassador), Uwe Nixdorf (AWI), Ruth Bobrich (Trade Officer)
MOSES Expedition in Canada
A team of scientists and engineers from AWI and GEOMAR started on an expedition to the Canadian Arctic to investigate thawing permafrost. Read their reports!
Antje Boetius at Offshore Economic Forum
AWI director with her talk „Marine life – how to protect and conserve our biodiversity“ at the Offshore Economic Forum on Helgoland island.
Surprising ice conditions favor measurements further north
The second half of our cruise started with a northwesterly directed transit. To follow the originally planned seismic profiles we would have had to cross an ice field of approximately 40 nautical miles.
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Prof. Antje Boetius receives the 2018 German Environmental Award
The 2018 German Environmental Award goes to Antje Boetius and a team of wastewater experts from Leipzig. The Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) is glad to see the deep seas and polar regions, the last great expanses of unspoiled nature, attracting more attention. Helmholtz President Prof. Otmar D. Wiestler has praised Boetius as a strong advocate for preserving our oceans.
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Geophysics in the fog and an exciting sediment core
In week two of our four weeks of expedition we have continued our reflexion seismic work in the Northern Greenland Sea.
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How Arctic lakes are accelerating climate change
In the future, climate change could abruptly increase the amount of methane released by lakes in the permafrost regions of the Arctic. The explanation: because of thawing permafrost, these lakes are expanding, and below them the water is gnawing away deeper and deeper into the previously frozen soil where microbes now can produce methane. An international research team, including experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, has now determined that the rapid thaw under lakes has been neglected in models so far and that bacterial decomposition of organic…
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