The Biological Carbon Pump in a Changing WorldInternal

The EuroMarine Foresight Symposium "The Biological Carbon Pump in a Changing World" was initiated to bring together leading European scientists to discuss the current and future research needs of this critical mechanism in our oceans. A total of 27 scientists participated.

All participants agreed that the EuroMarine Foresight Symposium was an excellent opportunity where we for more or less the first time brought together exclusively European scientists working on the biological pump. All participants found the spectra of scientific fields represented at the workshop excellent. It was agreed to keep in close contact and look for funding schemes where future meetings can be held and will aim to form a consortium in order to fund research a program across countries. Participants had each identified key gaps in the field a priori to the workshop, which organizers subsequently summarized and used as a focus for the workshop.

These broad spectra of identified research gaps were narrowed into a more focussed scientific aim for the research related to the biological pump. The first task after the workshop will be to write a perspective paper based on the outcome from the workshop. As a result of the workshop, several new potential collaborations were identified. The session on current ongoing projects and potential proposals from different countries (France, two from Spain and one from the UK) also opened up room for further collaborations and several of the participants will join already funded projects. Several participants formed ideas and joined up to write nationally funded proposals. Work is now underway on the idea of forming a consortium to bring all participants together in a bigger project, possibly funded through a future Horizon 2020 call and also smaller opportunities. Specific research goals and methods were identified and will be pursued as a joint effort to further progress the research on the biological pump in Europe.