University of Helsinki 
 Tvärminne Zoological station

The University of Helsinki (UH) is represented in FINMARI by its largest field station, Tvärminne Zoological Station (TZS), located on the Hanko peninsula at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland. TZS is one of three biological research stations belonging to the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences  and it serves as a centre for a large variety of biological and ecological research, carries out environmental monitoring, and offers facilities for field courses, symposia and seminars.

Tvärminne from air, and ice diving in winter

As the largest marine field station in Finland and in the northern Baltic Sea, TZS offers excellent facilities for year-round field studies in combination with experimental research, covering the full scale from field mesocosms to laboratory aquaria and microcosms. It also provides access to the FINMARI phytoplankton culture collection.

A research vessel, purpose-built for coastal research (18 m catamaran RV Augusta, delivered in 2019) provides opportunities for completely new lines of research. Research focuses on the links between coastal biodiversity, climate change and ecosystem function, involving pelagic as well as benthic habitats, and measurements of sea-atmosphere fluxes of greenhouse gases.

TZS coordinates the national node of the Finnish marine stations within FINMARI (TZS, Seili, Husö and Korpoström) in the EMBRC-ERIC. The infrastructure is providing a specific niche for Finnish marine RIs withinthe  EMBRC; namely providing a Baltic Sea dimension to the availability of material and data, and enabling northern latitude studies throughout the year.


Links

University of Helsinki

EMBRC - European Marine Biological Resource Centre


Contact

Research Coordinator Joanna Norkko