From 22-27 February, over 6,000 attendees descended on the Scottish Events Campus in Glasgow for Ocean Sciences Meeting 2026, the first time that the conference has been held outside of the United States. They even had their own tartan designed for the occasion! The Scottish Arctic Network was well represented, with members chairing sessions and presenting talks and posters spanning the polar sciences.
Laura Hobbs, the ScAN Steering Group member for the Scottish Association for Marine Science co-chaired the session Light in the Ocean: From Fundamental Driver to Emerging Change – Drivers, Impacts and Monitoring Changing Marine Lightscapes. In this session, David McKee from the University of Strathclyde presented his research on the extent of ship light pollution influencing organisms in the Polar Night.
Craig Smeaton from the University of St Andrews chaired the session Fjords in Transition: Connecting Physical, Biogeochemical, and Ecosystem Dynamics in the Land-Ocean Continuum Under a Changing Climate, in which Laura Hobbs presented on drivers of the spring plankton bloom in Svalbard fjords, and Beth Langley, the ScAN representative for Early Career Researchers, presenting a poster on her PhD work studying carbon sequestration in Arctic fjord sediments.
Emma Tyldesley from the University of Strathclyde chaired the session Animal Behavior, Prey Energyscapes and Ocean Features: Synthesizing Oceanographic and Ecological Perspectives, in which Neil Banas, also from Strathyclde, and Paul Fernandes from Heriot-Watt University presented posters.
Other ScAN members presented on marine-terminating glaciers in Greenland (Emma Cameron and Laura Castro de la Guardia), drivers of coastal polynya formation (Mia Hurst), and air-sea carbon fluxes in the marginal ice zone (Caroline Gjelstrup), among others, showcasing the breadth and depth of polar oceanic research happening across Scotland.
