I'm thrilled to present our latest paper about the trophic ecology and behavior of sea stars (Asteroidea) and brittle stars (Ophiuroidea) from the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone. doi.org/10.1016/j.ds... It was a great collaboration with a team from 🇪🇸🇳🇱🇩🇪🇵🇹 and 🇦🇹 (incl. @bokamero.bsky.social). #SciArt

The third phase of the European research project #MiningImpact has officially begun. Researchers from nine countries are joining forces to study the ecological consequences of #deepseamining. Project coordinator is GEOMAR-biochemist Dr Matthias Haeckel. www.geomar.de/en/news/arti...

Welche Folgen Eingriffe in die Tiefsee-Lebenswelten hätten, ist bisher nur wenig erforscht. Das europäische Forschungsprojekt MiningImpact3 versucht, diese Frage zu beantworten. Weitere Informationen unter: www.geomar.de/news/article... Fotos: ROV Kiel 6000 / GEOMAR; Tim Kalvelage

Excellent coverage of current issues regarding deep seabed mining and emerging issues, particularly the recent executive order by President Trump. #deepseamining #marineconservation #marinelaw #unclos #internationalseabedauthority #marinebiodiversity www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

Herzlichen Glückwunsch @drtanjastratmann.bsky.social! @erc.europa.eu fördert ihr Projekt zum marinen Stickstoffkreislauf und der Rolle von Tiefsee-Schwämmen ab 2026 am MARUM an der #UniBremen. 🧽🌊🔬 #ERCStG #OceanFloor #Umweltwissenschaften #MarineSciences mehr Infos ➡️ www.marum.de/ERC-SPYCLING...

In 2025, successful ERC Starting Grant applicants have 51 different nationalities and will carry out their projects in 25 countries. This round of grants is estimated to create some 3,000 jobs within the teams of the new grantees. More facts and figures 👉 buff.ly/ixs2NRf

The new ERC Starting Grant - funded projects include: ✴️ redefining false memories ✴️ making artificial touch feel more natural and realistic ✴️ how aging reshapes human tissues ✴️ ADHD in adults vs childhood ✴️ how plants shield from excessive sun exposure Discover more 👉 buff.ly/APfNmCK

📣 The ERC Starting Grant call results are out! Find out which early-career researchers will receive funding this year, what they will be investigating, where they will be based... plus lots of other #ERCStG facts & figures for 2025! ➡️ buff.ly/IsafuFh #FrontierResearch 🇪🇺#EUfunded #HorizonEurope

I had to wait for 1.5 months to be allowed to pin this to my office door at #NIOZ. The @erc.europa.eu #ERCStG results for 2025 are out and my name is on the list, meaning I got one of the most prestigious grants in #EuropeanAcademia to study nitrogen cycle in 🧽 at @marumunibremen.bsky.social in 🇩🇪.

A 🧽 conference wouldn't be a 🧽 conference when you're not bringing actual 🧽🧽, would it? So, I prepared sub-samples of 22 glass sponge specimens from the abyssal Central Pacific for @anariesgo.bsky.social & Sergi Taboada for the 12th World Sponge Conference (@wscommunity.bsky.social) next week.

Today, I show really atypical behavior 🤔: I'm preparing the oral presentation for the @wscommunity.bsky.social a week ahead of the conference (as requested by the conference organizers). Usually, I finish preparing my oral presentation the night before the talk 🤷‍♀️.

I’m on a podcast! 🪨🪸🦑 Thanks @feltman.bsky.social for having me on to @sciam.bsky.social’s show. We talked about “dark oxygen” and whats happened in the 12 months since the discovery making headlines. Listen (& then watch our mini doc starring @drandrewthaler.bsky.social @jjmarlow.bsky.social)👇

I'm preparing an art exhibition to showcase 33 illustrations I drew 👩‍🎨 for 8 scientific papers published since 2021 (1 of them still needs to be submitted 🫣). The last drawing is finally framed 🖼️ and packed, so now I really have to speed up finishing the last manuscript and submit it. #SciArt

How do you mess up the agenda of your MSc and PhD students? Just go on vacation in the midst of August 😅😂. Let's see whether my Master student remembers our meeting tomorrow which is outside our usual (biweekly) meeting time 😉.

I‘m back from vacation and it’s still summer on the island of Texel 🇳🇱, so I‘m reviewing a manuscript on the #NIOZ terrace.

I consider myself as being strict, but helpful. Last months I reviewed a paper with a strong experimental design, but mistakes in the rate calculations. Hence, I corrected the equations and provided my name and e-mail address so the authors could contact me in case something was unclear. 1/n

I really wonder whether it's so uncommon to use a reference manager/ software. I'm revising a manuscript in which min 1 paper is cited several time, but not listed in the reference list and I actually wanted to check and read it. I had similar issues (though even more severe) with the toxic paper 🫣.

It's the last couple of days at work before I'm on vacation. Therefore, I discussed the methods and results of a manuscript draft with the last author on Friday, and after including additional analyses over the weekend, I'll send it to the 2nd author of the 3-author manuscript today. 1/2

After spending the last 3 weeks with an almost toxic manuscript 📃 and therefore heavily neglecting my PhD student's work, I finally managed to read (and edit) the complete result chapter of @itziarburgues.bsky.social monographic PhD thesis 💪.

I value the work of taxonomist really highly, but why do you have to rename an animal while I'm working on a manuscript that includes this creature and now, I have to change 3-4 of my figures 😭. 👩‍💻

I'm thrilled to announce that our pilot study about measuring metabolic activity in shallow-water sponges using deuterium oxide (heavy water) has been published in Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology (doi.org/10.1016/j.je...). It was a great collaboration between #NIOZ' OCS and MMB.

Insight of the day: A simple phone call sometimes helps to understand an issue a lot faster than sending e-mails back and forth during an entire afternoon, especially when a marine scientist from the Geoscience Faculty, a.k.a. me, interacts with a lawyer from the Law Faculty. 🫣

It's framing weekend 🔲🖼️. In total, I have to frame 33 drawings; let's see how far I get this weekend. These drawings form the basis of illustrations for 8 scientific articles I have published (6), in review (1) or in prep (1) over the last 5 years. #SciArt 👩‍🎨

A colleague makes fun of me that I would have too high expectations of PhD students and early career researchers when I complain that 80% of the references in a manuscript I’m revising are wrong (not in the literature list/ not fitting the topic of the sentence where they are cited/ both) 😭😭.

I think my laptop 💻 hates me today 🥲🥲🥲😭. It has crashed 4 times today, while I just try to revise and resubmit my paper about 🧽🧽 and heavy water.

The view out of my office window is usually very boring (i.e., look at garbage containers), but today I can see an item fitting more my deep-sea research: a benthic lander system (though half-way dismantled).

Heading to #ISA30 in Kingston? Join DOSI for an evening of science, discussion & deep-sea storytelling! "10 Years of Science on Mining Impact & Environmental Protection" 📍Talk of the Town Room, Jamaica Pegasus Hotel 🗓️ Thurs 17 & Mon 21 July 🕖 19:00–21:00

My current grant ends tomorrow, so I spent 4.5 hours booking accommodations, flights, trains, etc. for the @wscommunity.bsky.social Conference and #MiningImpact3 Kickoff Meeting in September. Fun fact, in order to spend all the funds, I had to pay ~1240 💶 myself first, hoping to get it reimbursed.

I develop an outreach program where I'll exhibit the original drawings of the scientific illustrations 👩‍🎨 I prepared for some articles from 2021 - 2025. Now, the first frames were delivered 😍 and my office mate has complained I turn the office into an art studio 😂 (it's work-related, though). #SciArt

I realized again, I might have a PhD, but I'm unable to figure out time zones. I have an evening meeting organized by a team in Jamaica and of course, I diarized it 1 h too early. I highly appreciate that the organizer sent out a TEAMS invitation, otherwise I would have been lost. 😶‍🌫️

When I'm stuck with writing, I usually hop on my bike and start cycling, while my brain starts spinning, so that by the end of the ride, I have a solution to my problem/ know where to start. Today, it's too windy 💨 for cycling, so I'm going out for a walk and wait for some ideas my brain develops.

This morning, I have an international expert group meeting about one specific aspect of #deepseamining (i.e., test mining). It's online, so I came well prepared to the office. I might complete an illustration for the next paper about the abyss. (Yes, I can listen, talk & draw parallel 😉). #SciArt 🖍️👩‍🎨

A colleague received a very large and prestigious research grant today. I learned about it relatively early and told a friend about it. Her response was: Ah, that was the reason why he is in such a good mood today. My response: Yes, that's his 3.5 Mio Euro 💶 mood.

Congrats! Helge Niemann receives an @erc.europa.eu Advanced Grant for research into the ocean microbe-nanoplastic interactions and #nanoplastics inventories. These plastic litter fragments with dimensions < 1μm were only recently discovered in the marine realm. www.uu.nl/en/news/erc-... #ERCAdG

I'm really grateful for all reviewers who have reviewed my manuscripts, especially when the comments were constructive. The reviewer feedback I received today, however, stretches the word detailed. The original paper is 23 pages long (without references), the 2 reviewer comments are 12 pages long😲.

Op 8 juni vieren we Wereldoceanendag! Leer alles over oceaanstromingen, het belang van algen, metalen in het mariene ecosysteem & het diepzeeleven met oceaanexperts van TU Delft, NIOZ & UvA. Duik mee met Naturalis! 🌊 www.naturalis.nl/agenda/werel...

The manuscript I finalize now will be submitted to a journal that uses double-blind peer review. This might work well in large research fields with lots of scientists, but in my niche topic, it's impossible to hide my authorship or that of my co-authors. For experts, it will be obvious who wrote it.

What do you have to do so I return to the office after I worked at home in the afternoon? Send me exciting results I have been waiting for for more than 6 months... If you want to know what brittle stars do at the 🌎 abyssal plains, stay tuned for a paper with @bokamero.bsky.social and others from 🇪🇺.

My brilliant PhD student @itziarburgues.bsky.social will present her research at the #SIBECOL conference this week👏. I'm going through her slides at the moment and I can tell, having to present a multi-Mio 💶 proposal in just 3 min myself has benefits. I'm now a genius in shortening presentations 👩‍💻.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure to attend the @samsocean.bsky.social seminar online and saw the wonderful presentation of my former (long time ago) MSc student Dr Danielle de Jonge. I'm really proud what she achieved in the last years and I'm still working with her on #deepseamining related topics.

Last week I attended a PhD defense in Engineering at @rwth.bsky.social, the best university in engineering in 🇩🇪. www.ifs.rwth-aachen.de/en/start/art...

Working with colleagues in the 🇺🇸 is absolutely crazy at the moment. I wanted to ship pieces of 🪸 specimens to a taxonomist on Hawai'i for species identification and the costs would be covered by a university in California. Two weeks ago, the funds still existed, but now, I'm not sure anymore. 🙈

I have to defend a multi-million Euro grant proposal in ~2 weeks. Thus, today I searched for a quiet room where I would be alone, with optimal internet connection (WIFI & LAN), and good cellphone coverage (not existing in my office on the ground floor). I found this hidden gem, the #NIOZ tower room.

Join us tomorrow for our webinar by Dr Andrew Sweetman on dark oxygen and nodules! Tuesday May 6 at 3pm EDT. Register below 🌊 cobra.bigelow.org/cobra-webina...

Just before the weekend, I've sent a manuscript draft about brittle stars and starfish from the CCZ (🌎) to a couple of co-authors for their input. Afterwards, it will be shared with all co-authors in a few weeks. Great 🇪🇺 collaboration with European scientists working in 🇵🇹, 🇪🇸, 🇳🇱, 🇩🇪, and 🇦🇹.

I work on 2 papers about the ecology of 3 invertebrate megabenthos classes (brittle stars, starfish, glass sponges) from the abyssal Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCZ). After watching yesterday's Congress hearing about #deepseamining, I decided to call these animals Barron's desert creatures 😂.

Not only in the US are they cutting the necessary science to understand the earth system and climate change. 😭 www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/t...

BREAKING: Trump moves to mine the deep sea. "The ecosystems themselves are really important in the major global cycles that allow the ocean to be productive & to create fish & shellfish & feed people..if we want to mine the deep sea, we have to be willing to give up those ecosystems." -Dr Lisa Levin

Today and tomorrow I‘m visiting @marumunibremen.bsky.social at @unibremen.bsky.social (Bremen, 🇩🇪).

I proudly wrote an e-mail to my brilliant PhD student @itziarburgues.bsky.social that I read several pages 📃📄 of her method section while going on an Easter 🪺🐣 excursion. 1/n