1 March 2026. Hannes just returned from a weeklong trip to Norway, where he spread the word about our lab's sand lance research to colleagues and the Water Research Institute (NIVA) in Oslo and the Marine Research Institute (IMR) in Austevoll near Bergen.

Austevoll, the world-famous marine research station, has also been PhD student Emma Siegfried's home for the past 2 1/2 months. Emma became the first US recipient of a European Union exchange fellowship (AQUASERV program) that covered the costs of her stay and her research in Norway. The goal of her project is to rear embryos of a local sand lance species, the Lesser sandeel Ammodytes marinus, under different levels of CO2 to then compare the results to what is already known for the Northern sand lance A. dubius on the western side of the Atlantic ocean.

Emma's experiment has been a success so far, thanks in no small part to the incredible help of our Norwegian collaborators. Every one at the station has been welcoming, friendly and eager to show us the large-scale aquaculture research on cod, halibut, haddock, plaice and many other fish species that is being conducted here every day of the year.

As we gape at the impressive tanks and installations, as we chat eagerly about deepening our collaborative ties and enjoy Norwegian hospitality and nature, we feel that this may indeed be the beginning of another great chapter of sand lance science to come.

Emma returns to the US on 12. March 2026, eager to work up the collected data and tell her peers about the experience.

• Baumann, H., Jones, L., and Murray, C. 2026. The unusual CO₂ sensitivity of sand lances (sand eels) on the Northwest-Atlantic Shelf. Invited seminar. Institute for Water Research (NIVA), Oslo, 24 February 2026 | Institute for Marine Research, Austevoll Research Station, 26 February 2026