Scientists from the BIOCON, EOMAR and OFYGA groups at the University Institute of the ULPGC will deliver six oral presentations, present nearly twenty scientific posters and chair four sessions between this Wednesday, 8 July, and Friday, 10 July, at the most important marine science event in Spain and one of the most prestigious in Europe
Furthermore, researchers May Gómez, director of EOMAR, Borja Aguiar González, also from this group, and Ángel Rodríguez Santana, director of OFYGA, are members of the scientific committee for three of the four major scientific meetings taking place during this event, which will bring together hundreds of researchers in the Andalusian city and in the organisation of which the ULPGC is involved
A total of 23 researchers from the Biodiversity and Conservation (BIOCON), Ecophysiology and Physics of Marine Systems (EOMAR) and Physical Oceanography and Applied Geophysics (OFYGA) groups at the ECOAQUA University Institute of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC), will present their latest scientific advances in various disciplines at the 10th International Symposium on Marine Sciences (ISMS 2026), taking place this week from Wednesday 8 July to Friday 10 July in the Andalusian city of Cádiz.
This forum, the most important event for marine sciences in Spain and one of the most prestigious in the whole of Europe – in the organisation of which the ULPGC is involved – brings together four top-level scientific meetings: the International Symposium on Marine Sciences (ISMS), the Physical Oceanography Meeting (EOF), the Marine Litter Seminar (BAMAR) and the Iberian Seminar on Marine Chemistry (SIQUIMAR).
The symposium, organised by the Conference of Deans of Marine Sciences in Spain and the six Spanish universities offering a Bachelor’s degree in Marine Sciences (University of Alicante, University of Barcelona, University of Cádiz, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Catholic University of Valencia and University of Vigo), and which has been held biennially since 2007, will feature a total of six scientific oral presentations and nearly twenty scientific posters showcasing some of the latest work led by the aforementioned ECOAQUA research groups.
Furthermore, four researchers from the university institute will be responsible for moderating four of the scientific sessions, and three are members of the scientific committee for three of the four conferences comprising the Cádiz event.
As such, researcher May Gómez, director of EOMAR, sits on the ISMS and BAMAR committees, whilst Borja Aguiar González, a researcher with this group, and Ángel Rodríguez Santana, director of OFYGA, sit on the EOF’s scientific committee.
File photo of researcher May Gómez during a research project.
File photo of researcher Ángel Rodríguez Santana during a project presentation. Photo by Ernesto R. Ageitos.
File photo of researcher Borja Aguiar González.
Participation in the four forums
The International Symposium on Marine Sciences (ISMS), one of the four major conferences that also lends its name to this umbrella event, will feature BIOCON researcher Inma Herrera as moderator for the ‘Biodiversity and Marine Conservation’ session on Wednesday 8 July, a role she will share with Airam Sarmiento (IEO-CSIC). Meanwhile, May Gómez will moderate the same scientific session on Friday alongside Montserrat Solé (CSIC).
The ISMS will also feature two of the six scientific presentations in which ECOAQUA will be participating. The first of these will take place on the afternoon of Thursday 9 July, as part of the panel ‘Living Resources: Chondrichthyan Fisheries and the Conservation of Sharks and Rays’, and will be presented by BIOCON researcher Ana Espino-Ruano, under the title ‘Seasonal Movements and Aggregation Patterns of the Spiny Butterfly Ray along the Coast of the Canary Islands (Spain)’.
Researcher Ana María Espino Ruano during a presentation at the latest edition of FIMAR.
The second of these presentations will be given by researcher Inma Herrera at the ‘Coastal, Estuarine and Marine Ecosystems’ session on Friday 10 July at midday, and will be entitled ‘Neustonic Mesozooplankton as Indicators of Environmental Variability in Subtropical Atlantic Coastal Waters’.
File photo of researcher Inma Herrera.
At this symposium, 10 scientific posters will be presented. In the ‘Biodiversity and Marine Conservation’ section, Sheila Santana, representing EOMAR, will present ‘Growth and Metabolism in Physalia Physalis’ (Sheila Santana Rodríguez, Luján Barandiaran, Ico Martínez, Álvaro Torres Gómez and May Gómez); Luján Barandiaran-Muguruza will present ‘Experimental Deflation and Gas Regeneration in the Pneumatophore of Physalia physalis’ (Luján Barandiaran-Muguruza, Sheila Santana-Rodríguez, Ico Martínez and May Gómez); Sofía Huelbes will present ‘How Does Anthropogenic Noise Affect Marine Crustaceans?’ (Sofía Huelbes, Verónica González, Ico Martínez, Alicia Herrera and May Gómez) and, finally, Verónica González will present ‘Effects of Acoustic Pollution on the Respiratory Activity of Palaemon elegans’ (Verónica González Álvarez, Sofía Huelbes, Ico Martínez, Alicia Herrera and May Gómez).
BIOCON will also be presenting, during this session, ‘Project Janto: Population Genetic Assessment and Captive Breeding Feasibility for the Conservation and Restoration of the Short-snouted Seahorse (Hippocampus hippocampus) in The Canary Islands’ (David Jiménez Alvarado, Airam Guerra Marrero, Ana Espino Ruano, Lorena Couce Montero, Tomás Bañeras Bosch, Marina González, Jorge Falcón, Ángel Curros, Bruno González, Martin Böye and José Juan Castro Hernández), presented by David Jiménez Alvarado; ‘Trophic Structure and Benthic–Pelagic Coupling of Mesozooplankton in an Oligotrophic Coastal System of the Canary Islands (North Atlantic)’ (Erika Rojas-Aranda, Ricardo Haroun and Inma Herrera), presented by Inma Herrera; ‘Eurosyng: Science and Conservation of Syngnathids on European Coasts’ (Airam Guerra Marrero, David Jiménez Alvarado, Ana Espino Ruano, Lorena Couce Montero, Tomás Bañeras Bosch and José Juan Castro Hernández), to be presented by Kevin M. Díaz-Hernández, who will also present ‘Comparative Analysis of Circadian Rhythms in Xyrichtys novacula Under Laboratory and Wild Conditions’ (Kevin M. Díaz-Hernández, Eneko Aspillaga, Martina Martorell-Barceló, José Juan Castro and Josep Alós).
In the session entitled ‘Living resources’, Tomás Bañeras will present ‘ILUMINA Project: Mitigating Elasmobranch Bycatch in Artisanal Fisheries Using LED Technology’ (David Jiménez Alvarado); Lorena Couce Montero will present ‘Fisheries-Induced Evolution and Consequences for Genetic Structure and Reproduction in Fish: GRANDES Project’ (Lorena Couce, Ana Espino, David Jiménez, Ángelo Santana, Carmen Nieves Hernández, María José Caballero, Ayoze Castro, Airam Guerra, Jorge Falcón, Marina González and José J. Castro). The poster ‘Fishing with Science: Preliminary Assessment of Reproductive Cycles and Maturity in Three Commercial Fish Species from The Canary Islands’ (Ana Espino-Ruano, Jose Juan Castro, Isaac Costa-García, Jorge Falcón-Hoyos, Lorena Couce-Montero, Tomas Bañeras, David Jiménez-Alvarado and Airam Guerra-Marrero) will also be featured.
Physics, Chemistry and Marine Litter
The 2026 Physical Oceanography Meeting (EOF 2026), a major opportunity for the Spanish physical oceanography community in which “scientific and research staff will have the chance to present the progress made in their research, establish synergies and create a valuable network of collaborations for the effective development of this discipline”, will host two further scientific presentations.
Thus, during Wednesday’s session on ‘Small, Submesoscale and Mesoscale’, OFYGA researcher Álvaro Cubas will present the paper ‘Multidecadal Analysis of Rotationally Coherent Mesoscale Eddies in the Northeast Atlantic (1993–2021)’, whilst Ángel Rodríguez Santana, director of this group, will present ‘Diapycnal Mixing and Submesoscale Dynamics Within a Long-Lived Anticyclonic Eddy of the Canary Eddy Corridor’.
Researcher Álvaro Cubas during a presentation at the latest edition of FIMAR.
At the EOF, Ángel Rodríguez will moderate the ‘Oceanography and Climate Change’ panel during Friday’s morning session, alongside David Curbelo (ULPGC); this panel will also be moderated, at midday, by EOMAR researcher Borja Aguiar González, alongside Carlos Román Cascón (UCA).
At this event, as part of the ‘Ocean Methods’ section, OFYGA will present, led by Giovanny Alejandro Cuervo Londoño, the poster ‘Adapting Graphcast for Subregional Ocean Forecasting in the Canary Current Upwelling System: Statistical Accuracy Versus Physical Fidelity’ (Giovanny Alejandro Cuervo Londoño, Javier Sánchez Pérez and Ángel Rodríguez Santana).
In the ‘Unnamed Vehicles’ session, Jacob Stefan Torres Ojeda, from OFYGA, will present ‘Observational Limitations in Mesoscale Oceanography: High-Resolution Profiling of Wakes and Meddies Using Slocum Gliders’ (Jacob S. Torres, A. Rodríguez-Santana, A.J. González-Ramos, F. Machín-Jiménez, L. Cana, A. Cianca, A. Marrero-Díaz).
In the ‘Oceanography and Climate Change’ section, the EOMAR group will present posters entitled ‘The Gerlache Front From Historical CTD Cruises’, by Borja Aguiar González, and ‘A Newly Identified Current Connecting the Central Western Antarctic Peninsula and the Bransfield Strait: The South Low Island Current (SLIC)’ (Laia Puyal-Astals, Marta Veny and Borja Aguiar González), by Laia Puyal-Astals, as well as two others in which EOMAR researchers such as Tania Pereira Vázquez and Borja Aguiar González himself have participated.
This researcher will also present the poster ‘Spectral Ocean Variability From ADCP and Altimetry in the Bransfield Strait’ (Cristina Martí-Solana, Simón Ruiz, Borja Aguiar González, Jinbo Wang, Isabelle Pujol, Ananda Pascual and Ángeles Marrero-Díaz) in the session ‘Small, Submesoscale and Mesoscale Processes’.
At the Marine Litter Seminar (BAMAR), which has been organised in response to “concerns about this issue within the scientific community and across broad sections of society”, during Thursday’s session on ‘Ecological and Toxicological Impacts of Marine Plastic Pollution’, EOMAR researcher Alicia Herrera Ulibarri will present the scientific paper ‘Impact of Microplastics in Squalus Megalops’.
File photo of researcher Alicia Herrera Ulibarri during a research project.
At this event, Josef Thomas Greenhalgh, also from EOMAR, will present the poster entitled ‘Six Years of Microplastic Monitoring at Las Canteras Beach (Gran Canaria): Insights from a Marine Protected Area’ (Josef Thomas Greenhalgh, May Gómez Cabrera, Alicia Andrea Herrera Ulibarri and Ico Martínez Sánchez).
At the Iberian Seminar on Marine Chemistry (SIQUIMAR), which serves as a “forum for ongoing dialogue between Spanish and Portuguese scientists who use chemistry and its tools to study marine processes”, Tomás Bañeras will deliver a presentation on Thursday entitled ‘Is It Safe to Eat Shark? Metal Bioaccumulation and Human Health Risk Assessment in Squalus Megalops Meat from Gran Canaria’.
Researcher Tomás Bañeras Bosch during the presentation of the ILUMINA project at the latest edition of FIMAR.
And EOMAR, represented by researcher Ico Martínez Sánchez, will present the poster ‘Impact on Small Crustaceans Exposed to Two Sunscreen Formulations: A Case Study of Adult Artemia franciscana’ (Ico Martínez, Sofía Huelbes, Verónica González, May Gómez and Alicia Herrera). This will take place during the ‘Ecotoxicology and Marine Pollution’ session.
ISMS 2026 provides an opportunity for researchers and industry professionals to present the results and conclusions of their studies. Meanwhile, “students and recent graduates will find a suitable platform to publicly present their final-year or master’s theses”, according to the organisers.