Introduction
Prof. Han Dolman, director of NIOZ
Media attention showed the relevance or our work
2023 might, when we look back in a few years’ time, be the year when ‘the dog finally fully wagged its tail’. Words of the famous oceanographer Wally Broeckner. The simultaneous occurrence of heat extremes, both in the ocean and on land, stunned us all. Both the occurrence and the size of the extremes, particularly of ocean surface temperatures, show that we still do not understand key causes, effects, and impacts of climate change. In fact, we could still be well underestimating the impacts.
NIOZ strategy 2023-2028
These events do show the relevance of our work as reflected in the two themes of the new strategy that we brought out in 2023: climate and biodiversity. Declining biodiversity is likely to be an even bigger problem for our well-being in the longer term than climate change; its impacts run deeper in the loss of resilience of marine ecosystems and the long time it takes to recuperate from the current losses, if at all possible. Understanding biodiversity is understanding how the system works.
Outreach
Another sign of the relevance of our work was the media attention NIOZ received in 2023. There was hardly a day when NIOZ was not in the news with someone either explaining their own research about plastic-eating bacteria, or reefs made of pear trees, or commenting on the North Sea Flood of 1953, sea-level rise and natural flood defense, deep-sea biodiversity and mining, or the strange things going on in the heat balance of the ocean. On World Ocean Day in June, we organized a very successful breakfast session on the relevance of the ocean at Nieuwspoort in The Hague, for policy makers and politicians. In September we organized the annual “Noordzeedagen” on Texel, where a large variety of stakeholders, policymakers and scientists came together to discuss the challenges we are facing in the North Sea, with the need to balance all the different interests, from fishing, recreation, shipping to offshore wind farms and Marine Protected Areas. Further examples of our outreach and other activities you can find in this annual report. We are an active bunch of people at NIOZ.
Grants and appointment
We were very successful in 2023 in acquiring grants, from small ones (29 below 500 kE) to important large infrastructure grants (2), to personal excellence grants such as VIDI’s (2), and 6 other grants above 500kE. We published >300 papers and were able to perform most of our planned cruises. Our Head of the Scientific Department of Marine Microbiology & Biogeochemistry (MMB), Laura Villanueva was appointed professor in Marine Microbiology at the Department of Biology at Utrecht University. Anja Spang received the Ammodo Science Award and Eleonora Puccinelli received a WISE award to build up her own group at NIOZ.
Changing climate and declining biodiversity
Diversity in background, religion and personal history
Fleet renewal
We saw significant progress in our fleet renewal program to the extent that the christening of the RV Wim Wolff has now taken place on February 15th 2024 at our own NIOZ port. We experienced the start of the construction of the RV Anna Weber-van Bosse in Vigo, Spain at Armon shipyards and the keel laying just before Christmas. In its first full year of operation, the RV Adriaen Coenen has shown to be a great asset to NIOZ. Our ships were optimally used, not only by NIOZ staff but also by researchers from a variety of universities. With our newly set up University Forum we aim to strengthen the relations with all Dutch universities in marine research.
Evaluation
That brings me to another important event in 2023, our six-yearly Standard Evaluation Protocol (SEP) evaluation. Under the capable guidance of its chairman, Jan Mees of the Flanders Marine Institute, all our research, work culture and management were evaluated. In their preliminary feedback, the committee was enthusiastic: “Without exception, NIOZ staff were friendly, open, honest, and competent during interviews and informal discussions. We were particularly impressed by the level of expertise present in all departments and positions, the mutual respect between administrative, technical and research staff, the positive testimonies of early career scientists, the excellence, innovation potential and societal relevance of the research, and the quality of the general support services.” While the official documentation of the evaluation will be published when all the NWO-I institutes have had their evaluation, we were, of course, very pleased with this initial appraisal. In 2024 we will work further on the implementation of the recommendations of the evaluation committee.
Core values
We have 33 different nationalities at NIOZ. Their diversity in background, religion and personal history enriches our perspective and ultimately improves our science. This does demand a culture of openness to discuss differences of opinion, not just the scientific questions, but also the more complicated political and societal and maybe personal or religious issues. This is why we openly discussed among our staff in meetings if and how we prefer to work with third parties such as fossil fuel or deep-sea mining companies. As a result, we have formulated a policy that states that we preferentially work with parties that share our core values such as collaboration, independence, integrity and openness, sustainability and responsibility, and accountability. The biodiversity and climate crises do not go away, more likely they get worse first. NIOZ is in a good position to contribute new, and further understanding of and solutions to these crises. While the future is somewhat uncertain with complex geopolitics at play and, at home, a change in government, I believe that with our strong background in fundamental marine science, we should be able to do at least as well in 2024 as we did in 2023. Enjoy the read!
Significant progress in our fleet renewal program