Esther Thomsen
Report of GLOMAR PhD student Esther Thomsen about her participation in the World Seagrass Conference and International Seagrass Biology Workshop in Singapore from 11 to 17 June 2018
My PhD project focuses on the impact of aquaculture effluents on seagrasses on Hainan Island, China. It suggests itself that the World Seagrass Conference and International Seagrass Biology Workshop was the most interesting and suitable conference for me. This year it was held the 11th to 17th of June at the National University of Singapore. With about 200 participants and roughly 130 talks it was the largest meeting of purely seagrass specialists ever.
This year’s conference topic was “Translating science into action”, there were a lot of interesting talks especially on seagrass restoration. Many participants came from South East Asia, working with the same seagrass species as me. Different approaches and methods inspired me for future projects. I presented a talk entitled: “Response of three tropical seagrass species nutrient enrichment and seasonality in light availability in Hainan, China” on Wednesday evening. On Thursday I could participate in a fieldtrip to St. Johns Island where we first had some time to look at the seagrass meadows and then got a tour through the St. John’s Island National Marine Laboratory which has basically everything a marine researcher can dream of! Getting up at 3:15 to join the fieldtrip was totally worth it. Friday to Sunday there were different workshops offered. On Friday I took part in a discussion about seagrass restoration. Saturday and Sunday in the physiology workshop I learned how to use the PAM (Pulse Amplitude Modulated Fluorometry) to measure physiological stress response in seagrasses. On Sunday morning we had another fieldtrip to try out the Diving-PAM in a seagrass bed. Afterwards we discussed the results.
This conference is very special, because of the small number of participants. It was a very welcoming and encouraging conference. The manageable number of participants allowed me to talk to some of the leading researchers in this topic. I thank GLOMAR for the travel grant!
