About
When I first learned SCUBA diving in 2006 I discovered my fascination for everything that lives in the sea. Studying Tropical Ecology by that time, I shifted my focus from tropical rainforests towards marine environments. I soon new that I wanted to put my energy into conserving coral reefs and all the fascinating creatures that live in and from them. After completing my doctoral degree in Marine Science, for which I conducted research in Indonesia, I decided to co-found Luminocean as an organisation that gives students from Indonesia the chance to gain practical experience in marine biology, develop their scientific skills and become aware of local stressors that coral reefs are facing. The reason for it is that I believe that the biggest chance for conservation of Indonesia's beautiful coral reefs persists in well-trained local people who will become responsible future leaders aware of sustainability.
Since 2020, I am holding a postdoc position at the Ruhr-University Bochum (RUB), Germany. I still continue my work for Luminocean and am now able to put an even higher effort into supervising small research projects led by students from the Banda Islands. Additionally, I can now give students from RUB the opportunity to learn about marine conservation directly in the field.
In addition to working together with Banda Naira University, I was recently (Feb 2023) appointed Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Science at Pattimura University Ambon (Unpatti), Indonesia. One intention of this collaboration is to train and supervise students from Unpatti.
My two passions are research and facilitating education and I am very grateful to be able to combine both. The proposed project matches these two passions extremely well. Apart from being promising to produce data that will contribute to coral reef conservation, it will have a huge educational component. That is why I strongly hope that it can be funded.
Mareike Huhn (researchgate.net)
Joined
January 2023