In UFOTriNet, an intelligent underwater test network of innovative stationary and mobile UFO units is being developed with the aim of automatically and continuously monitoring the diversity and abundance of fish populations and their environment.

Factors such as temperature, salinity, oxygen, and oceanic currents shape the environmental conditions of marine life and directly or indirectly impact marine ecosystems. In this project, we aim to understand and quantify these impacts and use climatic trends to predict future changes in marine life.

We elaborate science-based concepts for sustainable management of coasts, marine ecosystems and their resources and develop an innovative model system to test future use scenarios and support analyses of possible management options.

AHOI (Adjusted Hydrography Optimal Interpolation) is a simple physical-statistical model developed in the working group 'Operational Observation Systems' of the Thünen Institute of Sea Fisheries to produce monthly gridded in situ hydrography through various decades. Special care is given to a high vertical resolution, in order to yield a good representation of the near-seabed hydrography due to its importance for marine ecosystems. As a case study we produced monthly maps of temperature and salinity in the North Sea from 1948 to 2013. This study has been published in Journal of Marine System.

The hydrographic conditions in the oceans, which signifcantly influence different fish habitats, vary over wide ranges of spatial and temporal scales based on a number of different physical processes. The Thünen Institute for Sea Fisheries conducts long-term observation programmes to regularly record and monitor the hydrographic parameters and make them available for further analyses.

Tope is the biggest shark species resident in German waters and is classified as "critically endangered". Tagging experiments with satellite pop-up tags in the North Sea are expected to provide information on migration behaviour of this species and thus allow a more precise estimate of distribution and population size.

Hydroacoustic methods utilize sound waves to detect marine organisms. Modern echosounders can not only be used to determine stock parameters but also allow identification of habitat use, species composition and further parameters of marine ecosystems.

Hydroacoustic methods utilize sound waves to detect marine organisms. Modern echosounders can not only be used to determine stock parameters but also allow identification of habitat use, species composition and further parameters of marine ecosystems. These data are the basis for predictive models allowing estimating sustainable catch quotas.

Climate variability and change directly and indirectly affect the distribution and productivity of marine fishes including commercially important fish species. Most of the alterations in productivity are thought to be driven by changes in growth and survival of the fish early life stages. We aim at a better mechanistic understanding of how bottom-up processes (e.g. temperature, prey) impact larval vital rates (e.g. survival, growth) by using North Sea herring as a case study.

Knowledge on the strength of the recruiting year class of a fish stock is of tremendous importance for sustainable mangement. Successful reproduction and foraging of fry are of essential importance for the further development of the stock.

The objective of the joint AutoMAt project is to either replace, complement or modernize part of the conventional data collection and analysis procedures in the fields of fisheries biology and ecology through inventing and implementing alternative, automated systems.

Climate predictions in the tropical-subtropical Atlantic bear a high degree of uncertainty and even bias. Biological long-term data sets are used to support model evaluation and in turn, improved climate predictions are applied to improve forecasts for biological distribution and stock abundance models.

The East Greenland ecosystem has been influenced by warming in the North Atlantic in recent years. As a consequence, there were distinct changes in the distribution and composition of the fish fauna in this area. The aim of this project is to investigate the functional relationships of climatic and biological changes and to estimate their impact on the fish stocks, fishing and fisheries management.