What we know about the Baltic Sea: a summary of BSSC 2005

Introduction    The Baltic Sea, an internal sea of the European Community, isone of the largest brackish water bodies in the world. It isquite unique in many respects, particularly in its natural featuresand in the cultural, political and socio-economic patterns ofthe countries bordering it.    After nearly 40 years, during which Baltic marine physicists,chemists, biologists and geologists had been holding separatescientific meetings, it was decided the time was ripe to arrangejoint scientific conferences with the purpose of getting togetherto discuss general and specific aspects of the Baltic Sea, toexchange information, to integrate efforts, and to get to knowand understand each other better. The Sopot 2005 Congress, precededby the Baltic Sea Science Congresses in Rønne (1997), Warnemünde(1999), Stockholm (2001) and Helsinki (2003), was the fifth jointmeeting of the Conference of Baltic Oceanographers (CBO), BalticMarine Biologists (BMB) and Baltic Sea Geologists (BSG). Likeall the previous congresses, the one held in Sopot bore witnessto the idea that we all, members of CBO, BMB and BSG, shouldcontinue to work together even more closely.    The meeting in Sopot instigated discussion on a broad spectrumof problems, from large-scale climate change-related processesto local, small-scale specific Baltic Sea features. Further subjectsfor deliberation included modelling as a research tool and asa way of providing services and forecasting certain phenomena,operational oceanography, and man's impact on the Baltic Seaenvironment and its resources.    We are indebted to our Scientific Committee for their work duringthe past months to sort out and select interesting contributionsto all the oral and poster sessions, and thus for making theCongress an attractive and quality event. We also thank the PolishAcademy of Sciences and the City of Sopot for their financialsupport.    We hope that the joint Congress and fruitful scientific discussionsit sparked will promote new contacts and pave the way to evencloser cooperation between scientists involved in Baltic research.    Altogether, 274 abstracts were submitted for presentation. TheInternational Scientific Committee selected 30 to be presentedorally at the plenary sessions and 85 at thematic sessions; 151contributions were presented as posters. There were 8 invitedlectures, which dealt with broad questions such as climate change,the world's fisheries and ecosystem changes.    The Congress also organised five workshops on the following topics: Sea level change; The IODP project; Ventilation of deep waters in the Baltic Sea; New activities of the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM); The new EU-supported BONUS project.