Fresh off RV Alkor and back in Kiel, I’m excited to share another blog post about our scientific research cruise AL630. I’d like to tell you something about one of the sampling methods that we used during the cruise. To track the daily movements of zooplankton in the water column at our station BB23 – […]
Hello blog readers, It’s another exciting day aboard the ALKOR630 cruise! The sun is rising, and the bongo nets and water samplers are ready to go. Greetings from Station BB23—one of the most sampled and ecologically important hotspots for phytoplankton, copepods, and fish eggs/larvae. Today, we’re exploring a technique called Lagrangian particle tracking (LPT)—a powerful method for tracing the path of a water parcel in […]
Hi readers, We have successfully completed cruise AL630 on April 16, 2025. After one day without work due to strong northwesterly winds 7-8 Beaufort, during which we entered Rönne harbor on Bornholm Island, the last 5 days of the cruise were packed with work, running continuously in 24-operations in shift work. We therefore were not […]
Hello again from Alkor! We are on day 9 of our research cruise in the Baltic Sea and today we would like to tell you more about the flatfish world. But let’s start from the beginning. Have you heard about metamorphosis before? It describes the transformation of a body form and structure after hatching, just […]
Hello from Bornholm Basin in the central Baltic Sea! With a team of 12 scientists and 11 permanent crew, we are currently operating in Baltic waters (see Figure 1) with research vessel Alkor to improve understanding of this beautiful but also heavily impacted and rapidly changing system. For this purpose, we measure physical parameters (temperature, […]
The sorting and sampling of fish larvae is one of the main tasks on our research cruises. Every year we cover a specific grid of 45 stations in the Bornholm Basin and since last year we also sample 35 stations on a grid in the western Baltic Sea. On each of these stations, sampling consists […]
Time at sea is limited and thus precious and there is so much to be done on a scientific cruise. To get the best possible snapshot of life in the Baltic Sea during our 12-day journey, we therefore try to sample as many locations as we can along the way to increase the resolution of […]
Hello from Bornholm Basin in the central Baltic Sea! With a team of 12 scientists and 11 permanent crew, we are currently operating in Baltic waters with research vessel Alkor to improve understanding of this beautiful but also heavily impacted and rapidly changing system. For this purpose, we measure physical and chemical parameters (temperature, salinity […]
Today scientific cruise party member Elvita is going to take you even deeper into the world of plankton (aka “the diverse collection of organisms in the water column that are unable to propel themselves against a current”). Here is what she writes: While we were all excited about finding an early cod larva in our […]
Today scientific crew member Anton is going to introduce you to the importance and fascination of larval fishes in the Baltic Sea. Here is his blog entry: Most of the fish species in the Baltic Sea spawn in spring. This is the time when life starts to bloom not only on land but also in […]