The laboratories of oceanology and systematics and animal diversity welcome you
Directors : Prof Jean-Marie Bouquegneau & Prof Patrick Dauby
Both laboratories include two professors, a chief technician, six permanent researchers and more than a dozen PhD students and postdocs. Each year, these laboratories also welcome many students making their master thesis. Research topics are varied but have in common the study of the marine environment. Our six main research areas are:
• Plancton and Ecohydrodynamics
• Modelisation of marine ecosystems
• Stable isotopes and environmental Sciences
• Accumulation of macrophytodetritus
Marine Science have always been a special area of research at the University of Liège (ULg). From the 19th century, Professor Edouard Van Beneden (1846-1910) undertook extensive work on various groups of marine animals (such as tunicates or Anthozoa) at the Marine Research Station of Ostend (the oldest marine station in the world, founded by his father Pierre-Joseph). His successor, Désiré Damas (1877-1959), continued his work of marine biologist and participated in several oceanographic campaigns including those of Armauer Hansen in 1922. But it is to Professor Marcel Dubuisson (1903-1974), Rector of the University, that we owe the rise of ocean research in Liege. Founder of the aquarium, he was one of the strongest promoters of the Belgian expedition to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia (1967) which was attended by many scientists from the ULg. He then created the Oceanographic Research Station STARESO, in Calvi, Corsica (opened in 1970), while putting together a curriculum specific Marine Sciences, with colleagues Professors Jacques Nihoul, Jean Godeaux and Albert Distèche.
It is up to him to whom we owe the birth of the Laboratory of Oceanology, currently attached as Section in the Department of Science and Environmental Management of the University of Liège. For 30 years, this laboratory has participated in many research programs both nationally and internationally in the various oceans of the world, the Norwegian Sea to the Antarctic, Gulf of Biscay to the Pacific atolls. It acquired a recognized expertise in different areas as the study of seagrass beds of flowering plants, ecotoxicology of metals on birds and marine mammals, the reconstruction of food chains, or the dynamics of planktonic populations. The Laboratory is also a component of the Interfaculty Centre MARE.