The Institute of Baltic Sea Fisheries at the Long Night of the Sciences in Rostock

The main events of this year's "Long Night of Science" on May 4 took place on the Südstadt campus of the University of Rostock. Here we greeted many interested citizens at the stand of the Fisheries and Survey Technology group. The discussions often revolved not only around the exhibits, but also around fisheries research in general. In addition to questions about bycatch avoidance and selective nets, there was also great interest in the ecological and social changes in and around the Baltic Sea and in our research on these topics.

There were also lectures on the challenges of fisheries data collection from four perspectives: Recreational fisheries research is looking for the needle in the haystack (population survey: where are the marine anglers?), the increasing number of wind farms and marine protected areas are putting some obstacles in the way of data collection, with squid data collection is quite different from what we know from real fish, and with the use of artificial intelligence neural networks first have to learn what data we even want to collect. Despite the late hour, the talks were well attended and there was no shortage of interested questions.

Overall, it was clear that the citizens of Rostock of all ages are up to date with the challenges pending in the Baltic Sea and the other seas, and they want to know what and how science contributes to shaping our future.