Introduction

Royal NIOZ operates from two strategic locations in the Netherlands, on Texel and in Yerseke

About NIOZ

NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research is the national oceanographic institute, and is the largest of the NWO (Dutch Research Council) family of research institutes. It principally performs academically excellent multidisciplinary fundamental and frontier-applied marine research addressing important scientific and societal questions pertinent to the functioning of oceans and seas. Second, NIOZ serves as national marine research facilitator (NMF) for the Netherlands scientific community. Third, NIOZ stimulates and supports multidisciplinary fundamental and frontier-applied marine research, education and marine policy development in the national and international context. NWO-NIOZ performs independent, often sea-going, fundamental, curiosity-driven and frontier-applied, (inter)disciplinary and transdisciplinary marine research. NIOZ integrates all relevant marine scientific disciplines in a holistic fashion with an emphasis on fundamental, process-oriented research. NIOZ connects researchers from the various disciplines, from across the entire knowledge chain, and brings researchers and societal partners together and provides sea-going research facilities. NIOZ invites partners from other research institutions, industry, the government and other societal organizations to contribute with their own knowledge agendas, and questions to the programming, realization, and co-funding of marine research. Royal NIOZ operates from two strategic locations in The Netherlands, on Texel (TX), and in Yerseke (YE) and facilitates a Dutch research station at Sint Eustatius (the Caribbean Netherlands Science Institute, CNSI) in the NL Caribbean, in all with some 50 junior and senior permanent scientists, on a total of up to ~350 fulltime and part-time employees including students. Some twenty NIOZ Principal Investigators (PIs) have honorary or part-time chairs at, and teach at, the various national universities and HBOs (higher professional education) with marine programs. The NIOZ education officer accompanies and aligns the various BSc and MSc courses on a national level (integrated programs on the NIOZ website), and e.g., co-organizes the national Marine Masters Summer Course that NIOZ provides on an annual basis. NIOZ also facilitates maritime technological research by providing knowhow and sea-going and onshore experimental infrastructure. NIOZ is typically regarded as the natural (inter)national scientific portal to Wadden Sea, North Sea and Southwestern Delta research, and the Dutch Caribbean, besides having strength and globally acknowledged expertise in open ocean sciences including the deep sea.

Royal NIOZ performs academically excellent multidisciplinary fundamental and frontier-applied marine research
Most NIOZ departments and facilities are located on the Wadden Island of Texel, with two key research areas at our doorstep: the unique tidal environment of the Wadden Sea and the economically and ecologically important North Sea.

NIOZ research

In essence, in recent times, NIOZ research was and is inspired by three major notions: seas and oceans (1) as unknowns, (2) in trouble, and (3) as source. Oceanographic institutions focusing on these issues and the required fundamental, process-oriented, innovative marine research such as NIOZ clearly have a pivotal societal role. This most notably so in the upcoming UN IOC proclaimed ‘Decade of the Ocean 2021-2030’. Hence, clearly, NIOZ Mission 2014-2019, called Blue Planet should be continued. We should push further in generating innovative, and ever more needed critical multidisciplinary expertise, fundamental knowledge, and new insights vital to underpin and improve longer-term sustainable and responsible marine management of our changing seas and oceans in an internal and external cooperative spirit. We framed this for 2020-2025 as Our Ocean, Our Coast, Our Future, further discussed below in terms of next level research.

NIOZ Roadmap 2020-2025

In the following, coupled research and strategic goals for the coming five years are discussed along a format adapted from NWO:

  • Strategy & Research: NIOZ as national hub for marine sciences and national research programs focusing on critical outstanding issues
  • People: perspectives for marine researchers
  • Infrastructure: accessible and sustainable marine scientific infrastructure
  • Nexus: connecting marine agendas, science and society  
Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021-2030
Our department of Estuarine & Delta Systems Research is based in Yerseke, on the Eastern Scheldt, focusing on the interactions between organisms and their physical and chemical environments in estuaries and deltas.