With jellyfish blooms increasing in frequency and severity across the world’s oceans, understanding their effects on the environment is crucial in order to enable appropriate management responses. - In Norway, jellyfish blooms have already been documented to interfere with some of the country’s most central branches of the economy, such as fisheries and aquaculture, as well as coastal tourism, claims research scientist Andrew K. Sweetman at the Norwegian Institute for Water research (NIVA), who now leads a 0.7 million euro research project funded by the Norwegian Research Council to study the impacts of rotting jellyfish on the marine environment (2010-2013).

International Conference in Egersund, Norway, September 7-10, 2009. Conference summary by Jens Skei, Gert Asmund, Poul Johansen and Jens Søndergaard. 2nd November 2009

Acid precipitation and acidification of lakes and watercourses continue to be one of Norway’s major environmental problems, despite Europe’s decrease in sulphur emissions since the 1980s. Water quality in Norwegian lakes and rivers has improved vastly, but figures procured by the Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA) show that 10% of Norway’s surface area receives more acid precipitation than lakes and watercourses can cope with.

“Norway has ambitious goals when it comes to regulating environmental toxins and the committee will have to evaluate short-term and long-term challenges in reducing emissions of these toxins,” says researcher Ketil Hylland. The selection of a NIVA research scientist confers the institute’s firm position in Norwegian environmental research.

A NIVA scientist asserts that a plan of action dating from 1992 has become obsolete and new initiatives are needed immediately to save a river in Sør-Trøndelag county. “Without implementing new measures it will be impossible to maintain the Orkla as the salmon-bearing river it is today,” says researcher Eigil Rune Iversen at NIVA.

“The sea trout stock in the Gaula watercourse is at its historic minimum. We have to monitor them and take urgent action, particularly in connection with the Water Framework Directive and the obligations it involves,” says Morten Andre Bergan ved NIVA Midt-Norge.

“NIVA carries out routine analyses of environmental toxins in 8 of the 32 areas in Norway where the Norwegian Food Safety Authority has cautioned against consumption of fish and shellfish. We are still finding elevated concentrations of environmental toxins in most cases, but in some spots we’ve found lower and decreasing levels of PCB and PAH,” says researcher Norman Green.

“The Langvann lake at Sulitjelma in Nordland County, north Norway, is still strongly contaminated by heavy metals from copper and iron mining, but the transport of metals out of the lake has been reduced by half since mining was halted in 1991,” says researcher Eigil Iversen at NIVA. Discharges of water from the mine at Nordgruvefeltet are currently the major source of pollution in the area. A gradual deterioration in the quality of mine water that seeps out of the main shaft Grunnstollen was registered from 2005 to 2007, but this development appeared to have peaked out at the end of 2008.

The beluga sturgeon stock in the Danube River is currently down to just 10% of its size 50 years ago. Sturgeon fishing has been prohibited in Romania’s sector of the Danube since 2006, in an attempt to prevent the extinction of the precious fish. Researchers from NIVA and NTNU are co-operating in a project with local researchers to learn more about sturgeon biology and its importance for the local population. The first satellite transmitters have now been attached to five of these fish and will be tracking their migrations in the Danube and the Black Sea during the next two years.

- CO2 capture using amines will result in emissions to the atmosphere of amines and degradation compounds, which pose a risk to aquatic organisms, says Richard Wright, senior research scientist at NIVA. The danger depends on the size of the emissions, the chemicals emitted, how these react in the atmosphere, to what extent they are deposited in precipitation, and whether they end up in surface waters.

NIVA’s competence regarding pollution problems in China and their solutions is globally unique. ”We spent a long time cultivating relationships and building confidence in our abilities. Now we are sought as partners in projects where other foreign players don’t get access,” says researcher Thorjørn Larssen at the Norwegian Institute for Water Research.

- After 30 years of overgrazed kelp beds along the Norwegian coast, this essential source of nutrients for the entire ecosystem of small organisms, shrimps, fish and seabirds has started growing back in certain areas. We are eager to find out whether this positive development will continue and whether fish stocks will replenish, says researcher Kjell Magnus Norderhaug at NIVA.