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COVID and Marine Science Update

During summer 2020, the EMB Secretariat conducted a survey to ask EMB member organizations about the impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns had on their research and teaching activities. In a follow up, the survey was re-launched in February 2021 to find out what had changed.

With the global COVID-19 pandemic driving large-scale lockdowns in Europe in 2020, the EMB Secretariat was keen to understand the impacts these had on EMB member organizations, and their reseach and teaching activities. With lockdown conditions continuing across most of Europe in early 2021, the EMB Secretariat re-launched the survey to gain more insight into the impacts of COVID-19 on EMB member organization and their research and teaching activities 6 months on.

An updated survey was conducted in February 2021. The survey repeated the questions in the original survey from summer 2020 which asked about both the negative and positive impacts that EMB member organizations had experienced, as well as the implications they foresaw for their future activities. It also asked members about inequalities in the impacts experienced by different groups of staff in their organizations. The updated survey also asked some additional questions about how the situation in February 2021 compared to that in summer 2020, about their expectations for the future and about whether longer-term measures had already been taken within institutes.

18 responses to the updated survey were received from 14 EMB member organizations in 13 countries. Nine of the respondents / instuitutes provided responses to both surveys. This short report outlines the findings of the updated survey.

You can find the results of the initial survey conducted in summer 2020 here.