MidSEC

MidSEC Conference 2026
Bäckaskog Castle, Sweden

SATURDAY, 13 JUNE – FRIDAY, 19 JUNE

What is the MidSEC Conference?

The 2026 MidSEC Conference is the inaugural in-person meeting of the community.

This is a small conference designed to bring the community together, foster discussion, collaboration and strategic planning to advance the field. The all-inclusive venue naturally provides ample opportunities to talk with your colleagues and enjoy the natural beauty of the surroundings.

Beyond the usual plenary (30 min talk/10 min questions) and research talks (15/5), we have lightning talks (5/2), poster talks (1 min), facilitated discussion/strategy sessions, and tech innovation showcases.
If well prepared, lightning talks are an efficient way to hear about a variety of work and ideas in enough detail to know what to talk to each other about in follow ups.
Poster talks give a chance to both pitch your poster and let everyone put a face with your name and work.
Discussions will start with 1-4 experts setting the stage then asking the community several leading questions.
Tech showcases start with short presentations of new technology or novel ways to use established tech followed by time to talk with the presenter and interact with equipment or data examples.

We are considering whether a white paper would be a useful output from one or more of the discussions.

Discussion/Panel sessions:

• Collaborative funding, asking as a community for support - what do we need as a community that can't be funded in individual grants? Simons, Schmidt, OceanX, OceanShot, others? Is there a way to make shared resources more broadly useful?
• What are the most important outstanding questions in midwater? What tech do we need to answer outstanding questions?
• Midwater biodiversity/biogeography/monitoring
• Midwater conservation - BBNJ, deep sea mining
• Communications and engagement

Tech showcase topics:

• Advanced imaging
• Autonomous observing and sampling
• Data sharing/informatics

Possible research session topics:

• Midwater evolution/adaptations/functional morphology
• Physiology/molecular evolution
• Biogeography/species delimitation/systematics
• Food webs/ecology/behaviour
• Microbial/animal interactions
• Sampling programs past and future, museum collections - Challenger, Albatross, Tara

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