The Swedish Society for Marine Sciences annually manages and awards the Dyrssen Award for the two best degree projects in marine sciences at the master's level. The award is instituted by Svenska Havsforskningsförening SHF in honor of David Dyrssen (1922–2011), emeritus professor of analytical chemistry at the University of Gothenburg. As one of the founding members of the Swedish Society for Marine Sciences, he spent his career being an active proponent for the promotion of trans-disciplinary research in marine sciences.

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Thea Bisander has been selected as the 1st prize winner with the master's thesis: A temporal and spatial study of CH4 sea-to-air fluxes from shallow bays in the archipelago of Stockholm and Trosa.

The project studied the sea-to-air fluxes of methane in shallow, coastal marine environments in the Baltic Sea, to capture how the fluxes varied with seasons and between different habitats. The study showed large spatial as well as temporal variations, which is important information in trying to understand the contribution of marine coastal areas to the total methane budget.

Master degree project in Geochemistry 60 hp | Thea Bisander (3890 Kb)

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Emelie Ståhl has been selected as the 2nd prize winner with the master's thesis: A test of the use of endospores of thermophilic sulfate-reducing bacteria as oceanographic tracers and bioindicators.

Emelie's research concerns special bacteria that have the capability to encapsulate their DNA in resilient structures called endospores. She have found endospores from thermophilic (heat-loving) bacteria in Arctic shelf sediments, and is now trying to figure out from where they were derived, and how they ended up at their present location. Emelie hopes to find a link between special "indicator thermospores" and thermogenic methane, such that they can be used to constrain the origin of methane emissions from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf.

Congratualions to both!

More information about the prize