Seagrass Systems Under Nutrient Loads and Grazing

Before attending the symposium there were 2 obstacles to take: Waiting before it was safe again to fly from north-europe after the gigantic ash clouds following the  eruption of Eyajallajokull. And secondly, getting my businessvisa (3 days at the visa office) from the Indian Ambassy in The Hague. But the day before departure I finally received the visa and planes were flying again, so Goa, India, here I come!

After 2 days of pre-symposium workshops on stabile isotopes, south (-east) asia, and opportunities to include dugongs in turtle research, the main symposium began. After a very interesting talk of Teresa Alcoverro on Turtle Grazing, it was time for my first presentation for the 700 seaturtle people in the ecosystem functioning session (invitation only). Based on a lot of positive feedback afterwards the talk was very succesfull. Attending the symposium, its many interesting presentations and meeting so many seaturtle people from around the world motivated me a lot. Thank you all!

10 February Judith Sarneel and me found our way back (was it a Levy walk?) to Conference centre “De Werelt” for 2 days of total saturation by Ecological research during the Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting in Lunteren: At daytime listen to “Allee effects”, early warning signals by spatial patterns, plantquality-herbivore interactions and at nighttime getting inspired from foodweb interations compared between seagrass, Serengeti-Mara, Hluhluwe (S.A.), and Barro Colorado (Panama) ecosystems.

The second day it was time for Madelon and me to present our poster “Overgrazing by Green Turtles?” (PDF) together with 45 others. The poster were evaluated on scientific quality, clarity and attractiveness. Not without succes, like you will see below we won the NERN and NECOV 2009 posterprize, and 300 euros! We are very happy with this result, now its time to write an article from it to apply for the PhD paper award next year ☺

The only critics on the poster: increase fontsize of the author names