STUDYING TIRE_DERIVED COMPOUNDS, PHTHALATES, AND TRACE METALS IN KIEL FJORD My research lies at the interface of biology and geology, focusing on how anthropogenic stressors affect marine ecosystems, with a special emphasis on calcifying organisms. Since 2018, I’ve led an annual teaching cruise in the Kiel Fjord, accompanied by my colleague Dr. Michael Lintner. These cruises not only offer students hands-on, research-led education—which I’m proud to champion and which was recognized by the Ars Legendi and DMZ Teaching Awards in 2024—but also serve as the foundation for our interdisciplinary research. One recent outcome of this collaboration is our 2025 publication in Marine Pollution Bulletin, where we investigated tire-derived compounds, phthalates, and heavy metals in Kiel Fjord sediments. Our findings revealed clear pollution hotspots, particularly near Laboe, the city of Kiel, and the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal, with elevated levels of contaminants even in deeper sediment layers. This work underscores the persistent human impact on coastal environments and highlights the importance of integrating environmental chemistry with ecological and educational perspectives.
PTEROPODS- THE WORLDS SMALLEST OCEAN GLIDERSI study the impacts of ocean acidification and warming on planktonic organisms by analyzing geochemical signals in pteropod shells collected from sediments and plankton samples across the world’s major oceans—from the icy waters of Svalbard in the north down to the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. These tiny marine snails act as sensitive indicators of changing ocean conditions. Using advanced techniques like laser ablation ICP mass spectrometry, I extract microscopic material from their shells to reveal detailed chemical fingerprints that track shifts in ocean chemistry and temperature over time. This global approach allows me to better understand how climate change is affecting marine ecosystems from pole to pole.
Thanks to successful funding, I was able to send two talented students aboard the research vessel Polarstern during cruise PS141 to explore a fascinating and urgent question: the diversity, abundance, and ecology of pteropods across the Southern Ocean. Often called the “canaries of the sea,” pteropods are sensitive indicators of ocean acidification, yet their distribution and ecological roles in this vast and understudied region remain a mystery. My students took on the challenge of sampling along multiple latitudinal and longitudinal transects in the Indian Sector. Together with my collaboration partner in the Netherlands, Katja Peijnenburg we are now using molecular tools to uncover species boundaries and population structures. Beyond counting and identifying these delicate sea butterflies, we are also shedding light on key aspects of their lifestyle—where they live in the water column, their daily vertical migrations, what they eat, and their position in the food web. This unique opportunity not only advances critical knowledge about how pteropods may respond to a changing ocean but also provides invaluable hands-on experience at the forefront of polar marine science.
FORAM FACTORY
The picture on the top of this webpage shows an adult foram that underwent asexual reproduction and divided itsself into many, many genetically identical clones (bigger green dots, the tiny green dots are algae the forams eat). I use these tiny forams in my experiments to study the effect of changing environmental parameters, for instance OA.
SO264 (JUNE 29- AUGUST 24, 2018): PROXY CALIBRATION IN THE PACIFIC
watch the video below or read our blogs here
MSM 58 (SEPTEMBER 10- OCTOBER 7, 2016): BIOMINERALIZATION OF FORAMINIFERA Foraminifera undergo gametogenesis in phase with the lunar cycle. It has been proposed that the driving force behind this might be the change of the Earth’s Magnetic Field. My student, Charlotte Eich, was culturing planktonic foraminifera during this cruise to investigate this further. Culturing foraminifera on land is already a challenging quest, let alone on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic. We managed to culture quite a few foraminifera and are looking forward to the analyses back home in the lab.
MSM 51 (FEBRUARY 1-9, 2016): BIOMINERALIZATION OF FORAMINIFERA The objective of the cruise was to investigate the influence of the Littorina Transgression on the environmental conditions in the Baltic Sea. This inflow of saline ocean waters into the back then fresh Baltic Sea took place 7000BC and reached an optimum 4500 BC, when the Baltic Sea was roughly 30% larger than it is today. While my colleagues were be busy taking sediment cores and performing seismoacoustic profiling of the seafloor, I was going to be taking box cores. I am using living foraminifera in incubation studies under higher temperatures under ample of food to induce reproduction. Then one foraminifera produces between 50 and 200 offspring, which are placed into experiments to study the biomineralisation process.
MSM 45 (AUGUST2-21, 2015): BIOMINERALIZATION OF PTEROPODS & DISSOLUTION STATE OF PTEROPODS IN THE LABRADOR SEA The major objective of this cruise was to study how the Labrador Sea reacts on the melting of the Greenland ice sheet ad which influence the anticipated freshwater input has on the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation. The last glacial transition is a good time period to study this so we were looking to retrieve new sediment cores comprising high-resolution sequences. As the Labrador Sea is understudied with respect to zooplankton, I joined my colleagues to investigate the pteropods in the are. One major focus was to see whether the anthropogenically caused ocean acidification has already affected the planktonic mollusks, which are at high risk due to their fragile shells composed of aragonite, a material that is especially vulnerable to OA. The other research focus was on the biomineralisation of pteropods: I used special inhibitors that target specific components of cell transport to study the uptake of ions needed to build the shell. Both research foci were completed successfully and I have already found some exciting results during data analysis.