News & announcements

The two seal species that usually can be seen on Icelandic shores are the Harbour Seal an the Grey Seal. The two seals on picture to the left are Harbour Seals (Phoca vitulina) and the one to the right is the Grey Seal (Halichoerus grypus).

A new study reveals that Species distributions are changing in response to global warming and the introduction of non-native species often acting in combination. Ranges are expected to move poleward as temperatures rise, with effects likely to be greater in low diversity systems in higher latitude areas. Such spread can potentially have consequences for resident species, especially in disturbed systems.

It was evidently a happy rendezvous between Ásgeir Gunnarsson, a specialist at MFRI with a spotted wolffish during the annual groundfish survey of MFRI´s Demersal division onboard the research vessel Arni Fridriksson. This annual research survey is known as the spring or March rally among the MFRO´s staff and the local fishing industry.

Pictures: Warsha Singh, an ecologist at the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute’s Pelagic division in Iceland, was selected to participate at the UNESCO International Day of Women in Multilateralism 2024. The forum took place 25 January at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France.

When examining the stomach contents of spotted wolffish, reported in a new article published in Journal of Fish Biology recently, researchers at MFRI discovered that it had consumed more than 700 fish larvae, which were identified as greater eelpout.

Humpback whales in Hafnarfjordur harbour have delighted both the staff of Marine and Freshwater Research Institute (MFRI) and people passing by at the harbour, as the view has often been on a par with the best whale watching. But watching the whales has not been enough for the MFRI staff, who have pondered the question of why the whales would stay in these areas. And now the answer is clear as derived from research applying acoustic methods and biological sampling. The short answer is that humpbacks have been chasing schools of small herring and sprat but also saith.

An international cooperation in microplastic research was recently launched. The project´s objective is to improve research infrastructure and strengthen cooperation between scientists in the field of environmental microplastic research.

A new study, published recently in the research journal Frontiers in Marine Science, reveals that Bomb radiocarbon determines absolute age of adult fin whales, and validates use of earplug growth bands for age determination.

The seminar will examine the broad and global implications of plastic pollution on marine fauna, with a specific focus on investigating the occurrence and magnitude of plastic pollution in the Sub-Arctic ecosystem. This examination will centre around a sentinel organism, the fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus), during its summering period in the waters off western Iceland.

"A new research method utilizes ancient DNA preserved in ocean sediments to provide reliable information of sea ice occurrence in the Arctic," says Sara Harðardóttir a researcher at the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute and first author on a research article published in the Nature portfolio journal Communications Earth and Environment this week, about the newly developed method.