Research

Current projects

Antarctic Science Platform (since 2022) ASP supported sea ice- and ship-based fieldwork in the 2022/2023 season, as well as the most recent voyage on the Italian icebreaker RV Laura Bassi in Jan-Mar 2024. Objectives are an improved understanding of the pelagic and sympagic ecosystem in the Ross Sea with a particular focus on changes in the zooplankton community with climate change.

Continuous Plankton Recorder project (since 2022) During the last voyages on the RV Tangaroa and RV Laura Bassi, I was responsible for the deployment of the Continuous Plankton Recorder. Together with Dr. Matt Pinkerton, I’m currently working on the final report for MBIE to be submitted in April 2024.

JETZON (since 2021) I’m part of the Joint Exploration of the Twilight Zone Ocean Network ECR group and currently lead a working group to benchmark the active component in the Biological Carbon Pump, with Dr. Deborah Steinberg (VIMS, USA) as a mentor. The publication is expected to be submitted in July 2024. Read the previous publication of the ECR group here.

SOOS leadership (since 2020) Since November 2020, I have been part of the leadership team of the Regional Working Group for the Indian Sector of the Southern Ocean (SOOS). We aim for coordination and implementation of the ocean observing system in the region and cumulating efforts in fieldwork planning up to data management. At the moment, I am working on reviewing the spatial and temporal coverage of ocean observations in the region.

Previous projects

Ross-RAMP (2022-2023) As part of Ross-RAMP, I participated in two field trips to Antarctica in spring/summer 2022/2023. I worked on metazoan distribution in the sympagic ecosystem of McMurdo Sound and the variability of zooplankton communities in the northwestern Ross Sea and assisted with sampling microalgae communities in both sea and platelet ice.

Krill projects (2021-2024) Following the ICED krill workshop in May 2021 (workshop report here), I contributed to a publication on working on modelling krill recruitment (to be published soon). Additionally, I co-authored a publication on krill observation methods together with the SCAR Krill Expert Group (in press).

SOLACE (2020-2022) I joined the SOLACE (Southern Ocean Large Area Carbon Export) voyage December 2020 - January 2021 as JETZON project and am still working on publishing the results. My research focused on quantifying the seasonal lipid pump, the mesopelagic migrant pump, jelly falls, and amphipod-mediated carbon export.

PhD project: Role of zooplankton in the Biological Carbon Pump of the subantarctic Southern Ocean (2017-2021) This project explored how zooplankton impact carbon export and sequestration in the subantarctic Southern Ocean.

I worked on:

• How zooplankton contribute to shaping the characteristic carbon export regimes in the Southern Ocean. Read about it here.
• Deep-sea zooplankton data at the Southern Ocean Time Series site at 47°S south of Australia, collected in long-term sediment traps. Check out my ECOmagazine article.
• The impact of zooplankton carcasses on subantarctic carbon flux, as carcasses have been traditionally overlooked when calculating the oceanic carbon budget. Find the published study here.
• Finding ways to measure in-situ respiration of zooplankton to test global estimates and models of plankton respiration. More information will be published soon.

MEASO (2018-2021) I contributed to the first Marine Ecosystem Assessment of the Southern Ocean, which started with the MEASO conference in 2018. Have a look at the publications that I was involved in the MEASO Special Issue in Frontiers of Marine Science.