IMBRSea

🌊👩‍🎓 IMBRSea master theses series I Kailey Ramsing

How are heat waves affecting tuna larvae? And will this have an impact on the amount of tuna in the ocean in the future? Can we still eat sushi? 🍣🐟👶

Hi! I’m Kailey, a master’s student 👩🔬 with the program, and I’m beginning my thesis work at the . I’ll be studying Atlantic Bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) 🐟 and how their larvae respond to marine heat waves! 🌡🌊 Heat waves are getting worse in the Mediterranean Sea, and this likely harms the larvae that use this area as a nursery. 🥵😥

How do we study this? I’ll be looking at how combinations of heat and starvation levels impact their metabolic rate, growth, and survival, to get a glimpse into how different heat wave factors impact the overall health of the larvae. And then, I’ll apply this health data to look at how tuna populations in the Atlantic Ocean will react to different climate change scenarios.

Sound interesting? Follow along as I continue my research into the fascinating and tiny lives of larvae! 🤩🥪👶

🌊👩‍🎓 IMBRSea master theses series | Siemen Peeters

Exploring the impact of bioplastics on marine communities 🌊🐠🛍️

It’s snowing plastic!

Plastic pollution is a global challenge, and biodegradable plastics are often presented as the solution. But do they really pose less risk to our oceans? 🤔

For my thesis at University of Vigo in the mesocosm facility of ECIMAT, under the supervision of Dr. Ricardo Beiras, I will study how biodegradable plastics affect a simplified marine community:

• Primary producer: 𝘜𝘭𝘷𝘢 spp. 🌿
• Filter feeder: 𝘔𝘺𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘶𝘴 spp. 🦪
• Predator: 𝘈𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘴 𝘳𝘶𝘣𝘦𝘯𝘴 ⭐

These simulations will mimic natural conditions in a mesocosm facility. I will monitor the stress responses across this simplified marine community. My goal is to better understand the impact of biodegradable plastics on aquatic ecosystems. As most toxicity studies focus on single species only, including food chain levels in a marine community is a key advancement.

Excited to share insights with a later update! 🌍💙

🌊👩‍🎓IMBRSea master theses series I Lorena Vidal

Hello, I’m Lorena, an IMBRSea student working on passive acoustic monitoring of cetaceans within the European STRATIS project with the Atlantic Technological University (ATU) in Galway, Ireland.

🐋 What is my research about?
For my thesis, I will study cetaceans (whales and dolphins) using passive acoustic
monitoring (PAM) — a technique that allows us to listen to the ocean and detect animals through their sounds, without disturbing them, for continuous and extended periods of time.

🎧 What will I be doing?
I will analyze underwater acoustic recordings to:
• Detect and classify cetacean vocalizations
• Explore when and where different species are acoustically present
• Support long-term monitoring and conservation of marine mammals
• Evaluate the impact of human activities, including noise pollution, on cetaceans
By listening instead of looking, we can monitor species and their behaviors in ways we couldn’t before.

🎧 Listening to clicks, whistles… and detecting them automatically
Whales and dolphins produce a wide range of sounds such as clicks, whistles, and calls. While whistles and calls are often used for communication, clicks are mainly produced for echolocation, especially by dolphins and other toothed whales (such as porpoises). To study these sounds, we use underwater microphones (hydrophones) together with automatic click detectors. These tools scan long acoustic recordings and help us:
• Detect high-frequency echolocation clicks
• Identify periods of cetacean presence
• Reduce the need for time-consuming research
Once detected, the clicks can be analysed and visualised using spectrograms and
specialized software to compare cetacean presence and activity.

🌍 Why does it matter?
Cetaceans are key species in oceans, and just very cute overall. PAM provides a noninvasive, cost-effective tool to better understand their distribution and behaviour, which is essential for their conservation! To save them we must listen to them first!

🌊👩‍🎓 IMBRSea master theses series | Gökcen Canbolat

Ever wondered how seaweeds support such rich biodiversity? 🤔
Hey, I’m Gökcen from the IMBRSea 2024 cohort! For my MSc thesis, I’m studying how habitat-forming seaweeds shape biodiversity in intertidal ecosystems along the Norwegian west coast.

My focus is on the brown alga 𝘈𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘩𝘺𝘭𝘭𝘶𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘥𝘰𝘴𝘶𝘮 and its red algal epiphyte Vertebrata lanosa, which together form a layered living habitat through a process called a habitat cascade.

💡 Did you know that habitat cascades occur when one habitat-forming species (a primary habitat former) supports another habitat-forming species (a secondary habitat former), creating a complex structure that many other organisms can use?

I’m investigating how seasonality ☀️ and wave exposure 🌊 influence the diversity and community composition of mobile epifauna such as amphipods 🦐, gastropods 🐌, and annelids 🪱.

By collecting seaweed fronds 🌿, identifying organisms under the microscope 🔬, and analyzing data in R 💻, I will examine how these communities change across seasons and exposure conditions.

🤓 Feel free to learn more about my project on the GEcoKelp website.

📷 Photo credit: Peter Barfield

🌊👨‍🎓 IMBRSea master theses series I Giorgi Urushadze

🌊🪱 Can tiny worms help protect our coastlines?

Coasts are constantly shaped by waves, tides, and storms and climate change is making them even more vulnerable. For my master’s thesis, I’m studying a small but powerful ecosystem engineer: Lanice conchilega.

This tube-building marine worm lives in sandy shores and forms dense reef-like patches. These structures slow down water flow, trap sediment, and create shelter for other animals, helping to stabilize the seabed and increase biodiversity 🌱🐚

Because of this, Lanice is being explored as a nature-inspired design alternative to traditional coastal defenses. But there’s a challenge: we can’t simply plant these worms where we want them. Their larvae are seasonal, and reef formation only happens under the right environmental conditions.

🔍 In my research (part of the Coastbusters project) I focus on understanding where, when, and why these reefs form along the Belgian coast.
I combine:
📸 drone mapping to detect and measure reef patches
🌊 measurements of water flow
🏖 sediment sampling
🧫 larval monitoring to track recruitment

By linking patch patterns to environmental conditions, this research contributes to closing key knowledge gaps in nature-based coastal protection.

📍 Research with

Image of L. Conchilega: Tabitha Pearman (published on the MarLIN website)

🌊👩‍🎓 IMBRSea master theses series | Elena Hackinger

As the ocean absorbs more CO₂ from the atmosphere, seawater becomes more acidic. This drop in pH affects many marine animals, especially calcifying organisms that rely on calcium carbonate to build their shells and skeletons. To cope with acidic conditions, shells and mussels must work harder to regulate their internal pH, repair their shells, and maintain normal bodily functions. All of this requires energy. That extra energy demand shows up as a change in metabolism, which we can measure by how much oxygen an animal consumes. Higher oxygen consumption means the animal is under physiological stress

For my master’s thesis at , I study the predatory sea snail 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘢 𝘩𝘢𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘢 in the Canary Islands.

Some populations live next to natural CO₂ vents in La Palma, where seawater is already more acidic. This site represents our future ocean! By conducting laboratory experiments, I will compare snails from La Palma (CO₂ vent sites) with snails from Tenerife (control sites) and measure how much oxygen they consume under different pH conditions.

There are two possible outcomes:
A. Local adaptation
Snails from La Palma perform better and keep their metabolism stable under low pH. This suggests long-term evolutionary adaptation.

B. Phenotypic plasticity
Snails from both sites adjust in the short term. Their metabolism increases slightly, but they manage to cope. At least for now.

But what happens in the long term?
By studying physiological responses of model species, we can understand whether marine species can adapt to acidifying oceans, or whether the coping effort will have serious consequences for their growth, reproduction, and long-term survival.

🌊👩‍🎓 IMBRSea master theses series I Beatriz Do Carmo Aramal

Ever wondered how these colorful, rock-looking animals live? Come with us to Honduras to investigate their shapes and establish possible links between environmental conditions and the morphology of lettuce corals!


Photos: Charlie Veron, Tony Rath Photography, Antonio Busiello, XL Catlin Seaview Survey
Map: MAR Fund

🌊👩‍🎓 IMBRSea master theses series | Angelina Freitas

🪸 Did you know the ocean holds memories of its past climate? 🔬

In the coming months, I will be conducting my thesis research, focusing on the evolution of temperature and nutrient dynamics at the southern Portuguese margin over the last millennium.

This study will use deep sea corals, as well as both planktonic and benthic foraminifera, as natural archives to reconstruct past ocean conditions along the water column. By analysing these geochemical and micropalaeontological records, my work aims to provide a more integrated understanding of long-term ocean variability and its relevance for present-day environmental change. 🪸🔬

The project will be conducted at .pt, in partnership with .algarve, where I will soon begin the laboratory work.

Looking forward to sharing the progress of this research journey. 🌊✨

pt .algarve

🌊👩‍🎓IMBRSea master theses series I Amelie Sophia Wierer

Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) is a commercially valuable fish species, but there is a major challenge for sustainable aquaculture - high mortality rates for farmed Atlantic bluefintuna 🐟

The question: Why do so many tuna die in aquaculture? ☠

My hypothesis: It’s about their hearts - they might be having heart attacks 🫀

The hearts of wild tuna and farmed tuna seem to have different shapes. For a highperformance fish like tuna, even a small change in their heart shape and structure could have consequences for the proper functioning of the heart ⚠️

My mission: getting to the ❤ of the matter by playing cardiac detective 🕵
1. Morphology: I'm measuring heart shapes and sizes from pictures to quantify any
differences 📐📸
2. Histology: I'm looking at tissue samples under a microscope to see differences at the cellular level 🔬

The goal: to understand if and how farming conditions impact cardiovascular health in tuna. If we know why farmed tuna hearts are different, we can contribute to improving fish welfare, reducing mortality, and making tuna aquaculture more sustainable in the future.

This research is a collaboration between the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and the Spanish Institute of Oceanography

Thank you for reading and wish me luck as I get to the heart of this fishy problem!

🌊👩🏽‍🎓 IMBRSea at VLIZ Marine Science Day 2026

Last week (4 March 2026) first- and second-year IMBRSea students at UGent participated in the inspiring VLIZ Marine Science Day.

It was a full day packed with keynote talks, predoctoral presentations, and interactive sessions that showcased the diversity and impact of marine science research. ⚛︎ 🌊

Seeing IMBRSea students and alumni contributing to cutting-edge marine research makes us incredibly proud! 👏

We’re already looking forward to next year’s VLIZ Marine Science Day, and who knows which IMBRSea alumni will be among the prize winners next time? 🌍🐟

Photo credit (images 1, 2, 4): Heidi Coussens (https://lnkd.in/e_dWXyuB)

🌊👩‍🎓 IMBRSea master theses series | Amanda Tregde

🪸 How do deep-sea corals reproduce in the dark, cold depths of the ocean?

For my master’s thesis at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, I’m studying the reproductive strategies of deep-sea octocorals, a major group within the deep-sea coral community that remains largely unexplored, with only 4% of all deep-sea coral species having their reproduction documented.

🔬 Using microscopic (histological) analysis and footage from remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), I’m investigating when, how, and where these corals reproduce. This research will provide some of the first reproductive data for previously unstudied species, helping us understand how these long-lived, slow-growing organisms recover after disturbance.

🧠 By filling these knowledge gaps, I hope to contribute to better conservation and
management of deep-sea ecosystems that are increasingly threatened by destructive fishing and mining practices.

tregde