The GMOS Train network was well presented at the virtual Goldschmidt 2021 conference. On the last day of the conference, there was a session about mercury dynamics and the effectiveness evaluation of the Minamata Convention. Within this session, 5 ESRs presented their upcoming publications, early results and the overall scope of the marine work page. Not only ESRs represented the GMOS Train project at the Goldschmidt 2021. As a Keynote speaker, Milena Horvat presented the overall GMOS Train project and Johannes Bieser shared a new biogeochemical coupled Hg speciation model for the Baltic.
The first of the ESRs to present was Luisa, who presented her progress on carbon and mercury stable isotope fractionation during aqueous MeHg photoreduction during the morning session. She was followed in the afternoon by Alkuin, who showed his upcoming publication about redox dynamics of atmospheric mercury at Maido Observatory in the tropical Indian Ocean. After him came Alina, who talked about her work and first results on evaluating Hg incubation experiments in seawaters using isotopic tracers. Then David presented the model he designed and his early results about modelling Hg and MeHg bioaccumulation in the ecosystem of the Southern Baltic sea. As the last ESR talk, Sonja showed an overview of the marine work package of GMOS Train and the ESRs projects related to this topic and how it all fits together.
Despite the unfortunate complexity of the conference being virtual, it was a great opportunity for both formal and informal interactions with other researchers around the world and it was great to see the amount of progress that was being made in Hg science. But in the end, we all agreed that we could not wait until we could finally meet each other in an in-person meeting.