October 15-16th 2026, Sommarøy, Tromsø
Since the beginning in 2023, Bathysphere has arranged annual symposia for those working with the deep sea.
The first three* meetings were arranged by the Bergen node (at the time, the only one), but this year the torch was picked up by the newly formed Tromsø node of Bathysphere.
“Bathysphere is a voluntary deep-sea network of Norway-based deep-sea scientists and professionals who want to increase collaboration and knowledge-sharing across local institutes. The network is named after the Bathysphere, a unique spherical submersible designed for deep-sea exploration. “
(from bathysphere.no, go check it out!)
54 participants gathered for two days filled with presentations, posters, discussions and socializing in a gorgeous venue (though the weather was…interesting at times, with winds reaching over 23 m/s and rain coming horizontally).
The talks covered a wide range of topics, split into sections on:
- Creating knowledge baselines and Monitoring change in the Deep-Sea
- Emerging Technologies & Methodologies
- A discussion on how we inform management and policy makers
- Deep-sea Management
- Deep sea across areas/regions/realms, and finally
- Making the Deep-Sea Visible: Art, Outreach and Visual Communication
Three of us from the museum gave talks. Luis presented on behalf of the Manet Team their work on a jellyfish species that is turning out to be several species; “A bloom of species revealed by multimarker DNA data: the hyperbenthic deep-water jellyfish Ptychogastria polaris across Arctic, Antarctic, and Atlantic waters”,
Nataliya spoke about how we are using molecular data to understand deep-sea macrobenthic diversity, and how museum collections play a vital role in this work.
I (Katrine) presented some preliminary findings from the MADAM project about how we are trying to record which other animals our amphipods are choosing as microhabitat and how that might help us unravel cryptic diversity in the six families we work on, and urging the many cruise participants and ROV-footage experts in the room to keep an eye out for such interactions.
The outreach-session was particularly entertaining, first with talk by former master student Lara, who is co-founder of a very cool initiative called the Unseen Ocean Collective (web page here), followed by a presentation by Jane Zimmermann, who will be illustrating the children’s book “Worm Party in the Deep” that our UiB colleague (and also former museum master student!) Mari is making. After the talks it was time to get our hands dirty (literally!), and try to create clay creatures that could exist in the deep.
It was a wonderful meeting, and we are so grateful to the organizers for all the work they did to make it happen. Huge thank you also goes to all the participants, for making this such a friendly and welcoming venue to meet. Next Bathysphere will be in Bergen in 2027, hope to see you there!
*You can read about our participation at Espegrend in 2025 here: Museum attendance at the Bergen Bathysphere Science Symposium 2025 | The Invertebrate Collections
PS: For anyone interested in the deep sea, the pre-registration for the big deep sea biology conference that will be held in Bergen in April 2028 is live!
Link is here
Project home pages:
Norske Arktiske Hydrozoer (NOAH)
Marine Amfipodar: Diversitet, Artskompleks og Molekylær studiar (MADAM)
Leddormer i Arktis (MAnDAriN)
The evolutionary origins and consequences of bipolarity in Hydrozoa (POLE2POLE) (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions)