“North-East Atlantic marine benthic organisms in the Faroes – taxonomy, distribution and ecology” is the 2nd BIOFAR symposium. The first, named “Symposium on marine biology and oceanography of the Faroe Islands”, was held in Tórshavn 16.-20. September 1991.
The first symposium came just after the collection effort starting in 1987 had come to an end in 1990. Eleven cruises with Faroese (”Magnus Heinason”, 5 cruises), Norwegian (Håkon Mosby”, 4 cruises), German (“Valdivia” one cruise) and British (“Challenger”, one cruise) ships had been carried through, as well as several trips of one or a few days onboard vessels from the Faroese Coastguard. The meeting attracted participants from 10 countries, in all 72 specialists and students, who gave 44 speeches and presented 26 posters. No proceedings were published, but the abstract book contains 66 abstracts in English. It was, for wider information in the Nordic countries, included in the annual report of 1991/92 from The Nordic House in Tórshavn, together with an introduction and two general articles in Danish and Norwegian. At the time, the BIOFAR bibliography list comprised 10 scientific publications and 15 other kinds of papers and reports.
The recent symposium came after a long period of sorting, sending out and working up of the hundreds of samples provided. It had 46 participants from Denmark, the Faroes, France, Germany, Great Britain, Iceland, Norway, Ukraine and USA. They presented 24 speeches and 6 posters.
One aim of BIOFAR was to stimulate Internordic cowork, both at the level of institutions and between participants and interested individuals. While a sufficient number of participants in the cruises could easily be found in the Nordic countries, the situation was different as regards taxonomic expertise to work up the material. It turned out that even calling upon the participation of specialists from several institutions it was not possible on a Nordic basis to cover all macrofauna groups. Therefore, invitation was sent to a number of specialists in many other countries and many were willing to join, rendering BIOFAR a true international project. The results appear from the list of publications based in whole or in part on material from BIOFAR. It now (2005) comprises more than 100 scientific articles and books, and about 70 other publications and reports of various kinds, written by more than 80 specialists and students from 15 countries, many in cooperation, listed at pp 257-269. It should be added that a number of publications are still in preparation.
A condition for the financial support to BIOFAR from the Nordic Council of Ministers was that young scientists and students should be trained during the program. Besides of the cruises quite a number of such young collagues participated in workshops and courses (“BIOFAR invertebrates” held in Bergen, Norway, 1988; “BIOFAR isopods”, held on the Kaldbak Laboratory, The Faroes, 1989; “BIOFAR molluscs and polychaetes”, held in Trondheim, Norway, 1989; “BIOFAR Crustacea Malacostraca”, held in Bergen, 1990; “BIOFAR polychaetes, held in Fredrikshavn, Denmark, 1990); “BIOFAR molluscs”, held in Fredrikshavn, Denmark, 1991), and a number of the specialists supervised Ph.d. and M.sc. studies. Three Ph.d. degrees and 15 M.sc. degrees from Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, The Faroes, Indonesia, Norway and Sweden are fully or in part based on BIOFAR material. Financial support for the symposium was provided by the Carlsberg Foundation and the oil companies with the FOIB-froup (Amerada Hess, Anadarko, Atlantic Petroleum, BG, BP, DONG, Eni, Føroya Kolvetni, Petro-Canada, Shell and Statoil).
Maps were made by Jan Sørensen, Kaldbak Marine Biological Laboratory.
Ole S. Tendal, Arne Nørrevang and Dorete Bloch