By Emma Siegfried

16 December 2025. Hi, Emma here reporting in from the Institute of Marine Research in Storebø, Norway! After a quick stop in Amsterdam, I landed in Bergen on Saturday morning. I grabbed a quick ferry to get over to the island and settled in over the weekend in one of the on-station residences. The area is pretty rural, but the surroundings are idyllic. The islands are exactly what you would expect to see out of a movie.

Yesterday, I was able to get a tour of the station, and the facilities here are incredible. If I had to estimate it’s probably 6 or 7 times the size of Rankin lab. The facility has been doing research on the early life history stages of Cod, Haddock and Plaice on top of previous work with Lesser Sand Lance (Ammodytes marinus) larvae, and as a result has some quite large broodstock tanks.

Unfortunately, I was not able to make it to the station in time to go fishing for the adults that we will use for my experiment because boat time is very dependent on the weather. At this point, the fish have buried themselves in the sand and will be there until they are ready to spawn in a few weeks. In the meantime, we’ve started working on setting up the rearing system for the embryos so that it is ready in time for spawning.

Hopefully things will continue to go smoothly!