I've arrived in Bergen, Norway for a 5-week stay to work with collaborators at the University of Bergen. It was an uneventful trip, which exceeded all my expectations for traveling with my kids, Reece (4) and Kira (2), across the Atlantic.
The business end of the trip is well underway.....I am working within the Modeling Group (http://bio.uib.no/modelling/) in the Department of Biology which has an impressive range of expertise. The goal for my stay is to collaborate primarily with Christian Jørgensen and Øyvind Fiksen to develop a model that explores the interaction between environmental variability and Atlantic bluefin tuna life history. Christian and Øyvind have published several papers addressing similar questions using simulations of a cod model. Their approach has many promising applications to Atlantic bluefin tuna research. I am clearly in the right place at this stage of model development. I'm extremely excited to be here and I'm optimistic that this will be a productive collaboration.....more soon!!!!!
Erik Chapman
