Visiting an international conference as a Master’s student
In July, the International Conference on Seafloor Landforms, Processes and Evolution (ICSLPE) was held for the second time. This year it took place on the beautiful island of Lipari.
My name is Luisa Rollwage and I am a Master’s student of geophysics at Kiel University. During my bachelor thesis, and as a student assistant in the working group Marine Geophysics and Hydroacoustics, I have been working on submarine geomorphology for the last few years. I was happy to hear about the aim and scope of this conference, as it covered exactly my interests and provided a great opportunity to present my work to experts in the field. The working group made it possible for me to attend this conference with the help of additional funding from the FYORD Travel Grant and the Verein der Freunde und Förderer der Geophysik.
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Morning walk to the conference venue through the streets of Lipari.
With around 100 participants, the ICSLPE is a rather small conference, allowing young to senior scientists to discuss their work in a very personal and accessible environment. As most of the participants were at PhD or more senior career stages, at first it felt a bit like entering a community where most people already knew each other. But as everyone was very welcoming and friendly, likely supported by the shared research interest of all participants, the overwhelming feeling quickly disappeared. I was also lucky to know some familiar faces from research cruises and the BridgET summer school, which was very helpful in socializing. I enjoyed talking to many scientists during and after the conference and learning about their different career paths, interests and expertise.
The conference was held over three days, with daily poster sessions, and only one oral session at a time. I appreciated this format as it gave everyone the opportunity to hear all the talks. The short, 8-minute duration of talks helped to stay focused throughout the day. The small size of the conference made it easier to talk to other participants after a session, as you were constantly walking past them in the venue or in the small town of Lipari anyway. During the impressive conference field trip, we explored the geology of the islands of Lipari and Vulcano from a boat. A highlight was definitely walking on an active volcano and seeing a volcanic crater for the first time. These trips showed me once again how experiencing these landscapes in real life changes our perspective on the data. And as a nice and surprising treat, both Etna and Stromboli had major eruptions while we were there!
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Yellow sulphur crusts and steaming fumaroles during the hike around the crater of Vulcano.
At the conference I gave a talk about the volcano-tectonic deformation along the potentially unstable flank of the Cumbre Vieja volcano (La Palma), focusing on a semi-automated GIS workflow I used to identify tectonic deformation. Presenting your own work in front of experts can be intimidating because you have to expose yourself and your work to feedback and, potentially, criticism. However, I found that conferences help you practice defending your work and become more confident in what you are doing. I am grateful to have received positive feedback on my work. As I am aiming to apply for a PhD position after finishing my Master’s degree, I am happy that I got an overview of different topics, institutions and experts in a scientific field that is interesting for my future. I would recommend this conference to any scientist (or student) working on submarine geomorphology, especially those who want to network more within this small community. All in all, this conference fulfilled my expectations and I therefore consider it a success.
Luisa Rollwage
Impressions from the Society of Experimental Biology (SEB) Annual Conference
My name is Smilla Tetzlaff and I am currently conducting my Master’s thesis in Dr. Meike Stumpp’s lab in the Kiel University Zoological Institute. I studied biology for my Bachelor’s degree in Kiel before enrolling in the Marine Biology Master’s program at the University of Bremen. My Master’s project focuses on the digestive processes of sea urchin larvae. More precisely, I want to investigate if sea urchin larvae are able to use laminarin (an abundant polysaccharide, or sugar, in the world’s oceans) as a source of nutrition and what impact it has on their fitness.
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Smilla during her presentation at the SEB Annual Meeting.
Together with several members of our group and affiliated working groups, I attended the annual conference of the Society of Experimental Biology (SEB). This year, the conference year took place in Prague at the beginning of July. The conference itself was organized into three sessions (cell, plant, and animal) with interesting talks throughout the week, bringing together around 700 participants. I attended a lot of fascinating presentations and got the chance to give my first-ever talk at a conference. Here, I presented the main findings of my master’s project.
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The city of Prague, divided by the river Moldau.
Going into this event, I was really nervous, especially about presenting my own work for the first time being in an early stage of my research career. I never attended such a big and diverse conference before and it surpassed all expectations I had. The five days we spent in Prague were not only filled with interesting presentations but with much more. I learned a lot about a diverse range of research topics and scientific communication. Even though it was quite a lot of input to take in from all the talks, it was a really inspiring experience. The evenings were always filled with time to relax, nice dinners and good talks over Czech beer. It was great to talk about the research I’ve been conducting for the last nine months and to receive both feedback and expertise on my topic from other scientists. It also was an incredible feeling to be part of the scientific community. Everyone that I got to meet and encounter at this conference was super friendly and interested, creating a really nice environment. Overall, it was an amazing experience. I hope that I can attend the conference again in the following years and would highly recommend it to everyone and especially ECRs.
Smilla Tetzlaff
FYORD Travel Grant Reports: Master’s students travelling to international conferences
Ocean Acidification
Dr Heidarzadeh’s TV interview with SkyNews on the massive M7.7 Panama earthquake on 9 October 2026
Dr Heidarzadeh’s TV interview with SkyNews on the massive M7.7 Panama earthquake on 9 October 2026. Click here for the full story.
Dr Heidarzadeh’s TV interview with SkyNews on the massive M7.7 Panama earthquake on 9 October 2026
Our ocean is an incredibly vast and mysterious place. And there is no place where that is more evident than the deepest ocean area in the world: the legendary Mariana Trench. Located east of the Philippines, the Mariana Trench lies in the Mariana Archipelago in the western portion of the North Pacific. The greater area of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument is made up of more than 95,000 square miles of ocean. Beneath these waters lie incredibly complex aggregations of submerged islands and volcanoes … and of course, an astoundingly massive trench.
Dive in with us to have your biggest questions answered about the famed Mariana Trench.
How deep is the Mariana Trench?
The deepest part of the Mariana Trench, known as Challenger Deep, is almost 36,000 feet below the ocean’s surface. For context, Mount Everest is about 29,000 feet above sea level, so the Mariana Trench is about 7,000 feet deeper than Mount Everest is tall. For one more comparison, the RMS Titanic lies at a depth of about 12,500 feet below sea level. The Challenger Deep is in waters nearly three times deeper than this ship’s final resting place.
Due to its enormous size, the Mariana Trench has at times been affectionately nicknamed the Grand Canyon of the ocean. This is certainly a picturesque image, but don’t let the mammoth size of this U.S. national terrestrial park fool you into thinking the Mariana Trench matches its size. The trench’s footprint is estimated to be 120 times larger than the Grand Canyon’s, and to reach the bottom of Challenger Deep, you’d need to descend through almost six Grand Canyons stacked on top of each other before you’d reach the seafloor.
Oh … and did we mention it’s five times wider than it is deep? It’s about 43 miles wide!
What is Challenger Deep, and how long would it take to reach it?
Challenger Deep is the deepest point of the Mariana Trench. Fewer than 30 people have ever journeyed to this area. The trek below the surface is long, dark and time-consuming, and it’s not an expedition considered lightly by scientists and explorers.
The first people to descend into the depths of this area in 1960 were oceanographers Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh, and it took them close to five hours to reach Challenger Deep. Since then, more advanced submersibles have been created, but it still takes two to four hours for modern vessels to reach such depths. For example, explorer and filmmaker James Cameron reached the seafloor in a little more than 2.5 hours in the first documented solo submarine dive to the area, and it took oceanographer Dr. Dawn Wright about four hours in 2022. It is crucial that these submersibles descend slowly and steadily beneath the surface, as the immense water pressure compounds with every mile a submersible descends. Speaking of pressure …
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What is the water pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench?
If you thought the depth of the Mariana Trench was its only jaw-dropping feature, think again. Water pressure is one of the most important factors affecting deep-sea life. In the ocean, pressure increases by one atmosphere for every 33 feet (10 meters) of depth. One atmosphere (a unit of measurement for pressure equivalent to average air pressure at sea level) is equal to about 14.7 pounds per square inch (PSI), which is the approximate standard atmospheric pressure at sea level. If you were to convert atmospheric pressure into weight, one atmosphere is about the weight of a bowling ball. Stay with me, friends.
If a vessel were to dive 2,000 feet below the surface, the pressure would equal that of 60 bowling balls stacked atop every square inch of that submersible. But 60 bowling balls is simply nothing compared to the pressure in the Mariana Trench. The atmospheric pressure at the depths of Challenger Deep is equal to about 16,000 PSI. That pressure is about the same as the weight of an entire full-grown elephant on every square inch of a submersible!
Need a more extreme comparison? If a human were to be placed at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the pressure would be equal to that of 50 jumbo jets piled on top of a person!
Do any animals live in the Mariana Trench?
The depths of the Mariana Trench come with immense pressure and extreme darkness, but somehow, life finds a way to survive. Organisms that live at an extreme depth, like that of Challenger Deep, have to be highly adapted to low temperatures (typically just above freezing), high pressure and virtually no light at all.
Species found in the depths of the Mariana Trench might look vastly different from animals from other ocean depths because their anatomy has been refined to thrive in harsh conditions. At such great depths, these animals typically depend on chemosynthesis (using nutrient-rich waters being pumped out of hydrothermal vents) or descending detritus (dead matter that has fallen from higher parts of the ocean) for food, such as whale falls. Just a handful of these animals include species of octopuses and squids, sea cucumbers, amphipods, sea jellies, shrimp, sea worms and some wild-looking fish!
In 2025, more than 7,000 new species were discovered in the Mariana Trench, including the hadal snailfish (Pseudoliparis swirei). This is the deepest-dwelling fish currently known to science. Now, the fish has been dubbed “the Mariana snailfish.”
How was the Mariana Trench formed?
The process by which the Mariana Trench was created is a geologically fascinating one known as subduction. On the Earth’s surface, there are thin plates that cover the planet’s mantle, which is made of molten rock. If two of these plates collide, one pushes down into the Earth’s mantle while the other is pushed over the bottom plate. When this happens, a trench is formed from the drag of the bottom plate. This process can sometimes create incredibly strong earthquakes. The plates that forged the Mariana Trench’s creation are estimated to be up to approximately 180 million years old.
This trench was unknown to scientists until 1875. It was then that a team of explorers on the HMS Challenger measured the depth of the sea by simply lowering a weighted rope into the water. They were baffled when they measured that first portion of the seafloor to be five miles below the surface. And so was born the origin of some of the most daring deep-sea explorations known to mankind to date.
Is the Mariana Trench protected?
The Mariana Trench is in waters off Guam and the Mariana Islands. The region is protected from some human activities under its status as a marine monument. The creation of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument signified that international, national and local leaders all recognize the importance of protecting this area.
However, just because the region is protected does not mean it’s not vulnerable to modern threats to ocean health. Plastic bags have been spotted in the Mariana Trench during several expeditions, highlighting the far-reaching impact of the marine debris problem. No corner of our ocean is safe from the ever-present threat of plastic pollution. The reality of a changing climate makes the future well-being of wondrous places like the Mariana Trench uncertain. What’s more: More than 70% of the global ocean has yet to be mapped. And what we don’t yet know about, we cannot wisely work to protect.
It’s up to us to work together to defend our ocean, from the sandy shores of our favorite beaches to the deepest, darkest parts of the sea. Together, we can work to protect our ocean as a whole, which ultimately helps protect treasured places like Challenger Deep.
Find out how you can join Ocean Conservancy’s wave of momentum to secure a healthy ocean and a thriving planet, forever and for everyone!
The post The Mysteries of the Mariana Trench appeared first on Ocean Conservancy.