25 and 50

Friends, I reached a milestone this week. My fiftieth scientific paper has been published online. 

Not only is the paper in question #50 on my publication record, but it is also a particularly significant work in my career. This paper summarizes everything that is known about hard-bottom communities in the deep Fram Strait. I first became captivated by dropstones and the diverse communities that live on them in 2011. That simple fascination led to a decade and a half of research, exploration, and discovery. 

My own research trajectory has developed in a much broader context: the Long-Term Ecological Research observatory HAUSGARTEN. This one-of-a-kind deep Arctic observatory was launched in 1999, and HAUSGARTEN data have demonstrated long-term changes in the Arctic Ocean ever since. In honor of HAUSGARTEN's 25th anniversary, my colleagues at the Alfred Wegener Institute decided to publish a special volume of research papers. My contribution was accepted as part of the volume. 

This paper is my gift to the Arctic and deep-sea research communities. In it, I lay out everything we know - and still don't know - about dropstone communities in the Fram Strait. I describe the methods I have used, including what worked well and what didn't work at all. If any future scientist is interested in pursuing research on hard-bottom, deep-sea Arctic communities, this paper is their starting point. 

I am very proud of this paper. You can find it here in the journal Deep-Sea Research II.