May 12-14 2025 in Sopot
On Day 1 of the SEA-Quester General Assembly in Sopot on May 12th, 2025:
The project coordinator, Marja Koski, provided opening remarks, reflecting on 15 months of SEA-Quester progress. She outlined the goals of the assembly, which are to review accomplishments, plan the next steps, coordinate research, improve communications and prepare for reporting.
Each work package made presentations on the status of their work, and highlights include new remote sensing and modelling data; new PhD/Postdoc positions available, being able to model future carbon storage potential, the availability of a new DEMO app to visualize carbon sequestration duration, the publication of many new papers, coordination with ESA, GOOS, IOCCP, and SIOS; the introduction of our advisory board members; 7 science talks mainly from Early Career Researchers, a poster presentation, the unveiling of Danish translation of our website, and the development of a GIS tool for Marine Spatial Planning,
On Day 2, the science talks continued, with presentations from 8 researchers on the following topics:
There were breakout meetings on the topics ‘coastal vegetation and biota’ and ‘Pelagic and benthic processes in carbon transport’; and a focus on collaboration with other projects, including our sister project POMP, the EU Polar Cluster and JPI Oceans. We hope to connect our ECR networks (we are happy to have 12 Early Career Researchers involved in our project, at AWI, IOW, AU, GINR, Hereon, University of Bremen, Imperial College London, Åbo Akademi University and IOPAN); conduct joint policy sessions at the Ocean Science Meeting in Glasgow, February 2026 and are tempted to start a cluster group on carbon sequestration or polar blue carbon, and we might also develop a joint policy brief on polar blue carbon for the European Commission.
On Day 3, the day started with a 1.5 workshop developing the project’s storylines, for the exhibit, podcast and ECR mentoring in particular. We compiled a list of all of the known upcoming meetings and events where SEA-Quester will be present. For 2025 these are:
Halfway through the third day, we ended our gathering by reviewing our list of goals for the meeting, with everyone agreeing that we had a successful general assembly. SEA-Quester is currently performing research on the DANA cruise and will have two other fieldwork cruises this year.