The DSM working group established beginning of 2013 by one of the first positions funded through the Helmholtz Distinguished Professorships, awarded to Jens Greinert. Since then the group grew to about 25 people which are active in national and international projects, often being the partner coordinating these projects. The group is working on natural science questions, engineering and data science topics and social science aspects including multi-criteria analyses for decision making. We are developing and advancing marine tools and equipment, write standalone software, engage in data management issues as well as outreach activities. All this is imbedded in Research Topic 6 and specifically in Sub-Topic 6.4 “Use and misuse of the ocean: Consequences for marine ecosystems” of the current POF IV. DSM works on different natural science questions with a focus on seafloor observations using hydroacoustic and optical systems. Various platforms as towed and stationary landers, ROVs and AUVs with a multitude of sensors are used; we are mapping and observing the seafloor of oceans and seas and for this “we listen, watch and compute”.
Please check our more detailed descriptions of software products, working methods and equipment, the list of past and current projects and of course our publications.
Get in contact with us (dsm(at)geomar.de) if you are interested in what we are doing or look for help/advise in using similar technology, want to learn about underwater navigation or hydroacoustic mapping, or are in need in GIS-based data analyses, image AI applications or good ways for stakeholder engagement and decision-making support.
We are engaged in four different research areas which also drives the diverse composition of the group. At GEOMAR we cooperate with RD3 for habitat mapping purposes and optical observations and with RD4 towards resource assessments. Within RD2 we close work with RU ‘Chemical Oceanography’ and link their expertise in chemical analyses with respect to environmental impact of marine munition. We are always open to new endeavours where our expertise is needed, can advance scientific understanding and provides solutions to problems. We are active in:
You can read more about our research topics in detail here.
To be efficient at sea and supporting our engineering sciences topics, we do substantial hardware developments and system integrations. We are not afraid of using all kind of technology (ROVs, AUV, moorings, landers, USBL underwater navigation, …) during cruises and deploy more than one AUV at a time. Some developments include:
You can read more about our hardware developments here.
Our software developments are needed to enable or support our scientific topics and support our hardware developments. We have a number of computer and software experts in the group who are constantly developing and advancing software tools and workflows. We write in many different software languages covering, old VB6 code, more modern C++, C-sharp, or Python to WebGIS tools and robotic ROS code. You can read more about our software developments here.
DSM publishes in peer-review journals, writes other text and publications e.g. for outreach and knowledge transfer and is very active in publishing data. Our peer review science publications fall into different categories according to our four research areas. See our list of publications here; or as pdf. We are currently compiling our Data Publications and none peer review output. Our latest high ranked publication about sediment plumes during deep sea mining has been published in Nature Communications (Gazis et al., 2025).
See who is and was part of the group here.
Next to doing science we are active in outreach and knowledge transfer/exchange; check our long list here.
Sometimes our members or projects win awards, check here.
