Ocean Sciences Meeting 2026
University of St Andrews
I attended the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Glasgow in February 2026, the first time this meeting has been held outside of the USA (with a custom-designed tartan for the occasion). Over 6,000 attendees from all over the world descended on the Scottish Event Campus for an expansive and diverse week of presentations and discussions about oceanography. The innovative use of silent disco headphones even allowed multiple sessions to be held in the same large hall simultaneously.
With so many parallel sessions, it was impossible to make it to every presentation that I would have liked to, but I attended fascinating talks on the emerging role of autonomous technology, light in the oceans, and conservation of highly mobile and anadromous marine species. I presented a poster on one of my PhD chapters on the Tuesday afternoon, investigating relationships between Antarctic krill swarm morphology and baleen whale density on the South Georgia shelf. The poster sessions were huge but very busy, and it was probably the most engagement I have ever had through a poster presentation, with lots of interesting conversations.
As I am near the end of my PhD, this was an incredible opportunity to catch up with many collaborators and friends I have made over the last three and a half years, who travelled from around the UK and further afield to attend. I had dinner with colleagues from Dalhousie University in Canada, who I went to Baffin Island with in 2023 and 2024 studying bowhead whale foraging ecology. It was brilliant to talk about how to build on the work we have done together so far as well as to reminisce on good times in the field. Several of the BIOPOLE team, who I was on a research cruise with in 2025, managed to get together for a group photo at the OSM selfie station, and I enjoyed attending their presentations to see all the progress that they have made in the past year.
As well as seeing old friends, I was able to meet new people and make new connections, and to attend excellent career panels to get advice and inspiration for my next steps. I also enjoyed being able to spend a few days in Glasgow, which is one of my favourite cities, and despite the long days at OSM, managed to get out for a run along the River Clyde and enjoy all the excellent bridges.
Awardee Profile:
Hayley is a near-completion PhD candidate based in the Scottish Oceans Institute at the University of St Andrews. Her PhD focusses on using scientific echosounding to study predator–prey interactions in pelagic environments. She has studied bowhead whales and Arctic zooplankton as well as Antarctic krill and krill predators, and is interested in how climate change and anthropogenic pressures are impacting food webs and ecosystem function in polar environments.
Leave a Reply