EMBRC is excited to announce the addition of a new member country: Sweden. EMBRC Sweden, or EMBRC-SE, joined EMBRC early January 2022, becoming its 10th member country. Sweden adds seven new institutions to EMBRC, opening access to research in Skagerrak, Kattegat, and the Baltic Sea, as well as excellent capabilities in ecology and environmental science.
EMBRC-SE: composition
Represented by the Swedish Research Council, EMBRC-SE’s lead entity is the University of Gothenburg. The seven operators include: University of Gothenburg; Linnaeus University; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences; Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute; Stockholm University; Umeå University; and Uppsala University. As some operators have more than one participating marine station/institute, there are a total number of 13 participating sites.
A long history of collaboration with Europe and EMBRC
Many of EMBRC-SE's institutions have a long history of collaboration with European marine stations, and prior to officially joining EMBRC, had been actively working with EMBRC partners (for more than 20 years!). In particular, many of EMBRC’s partner institutions have long-running collaborations and ties with the Marine Stations at Kristineberg and Tjärnö (University of Gothenburg). Sweden was in fact one of the countries which helped to establish EMBRC on the ESFRI Roadmap.
EMBRC-SE: innovative research in diverse domains
Many of EMBRC-SE’s stations currently implement marine innovation programmes related, for example, to seafood production. These services will vastly enrich the EMBRC service catalogue, offering additional opportunities for research and innovation to academic and industry users across Europe and beyond. Examples of services, which are already established include autonomous monitoring of marine habitats with environmental DNA and advanced aquaculture services for seafood production. The Swedish network also offers access to habitats and experimental facilities across a unique salinity gradient reaching from fully marine water on the Swedish west coast to near-freshwater conditions in the Bothnian bay.
Matthias Obst, member of the EMBRC Committee of Nodes (representing Sweden) and researcher at the University of Gothenburg, Department of Marine Sciences, said: ‘We are excited that Sweden has finally joined EMBRC ERIC. We are truly relieved to have received the mandate for acting collectively as a national network and now look forward to contributing our intellectual resources and infrastructure to the ERIC. We already have detailed plans to add our Baltic observatories to EMBRC’s European Marine Omics Biodiversity Observation Network (EMO BON) network. Our marine stations will also benefit from having additional visibility on the European stage through EMBRC’.
‘As a member of the EMBRC preparatory phase, our Swedish colleagues played a critical role in developing EMBRC. We are thrilled that they will now be an official part of the RI. The addition of their seven operators also means new opportunities for our users to access the unique marine habitats in the region’, said EMBRC Executive Director, Nicolas Pade.
Image copyright: top, Matthias Obst; bottom, S Green, 2001.
