Covid-19 Impact

1 April 2020

As a result of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, there has been and will continue to be disruptions to the planned schedule of SeaChanges activity.

We are just one year into the programme and the Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) are between 3 and 6 months in employment. The travel restrictions and country lock-downs have arrived at the start of a busy year of research, workshops and secondments.

Research/Lab Work

Due to lab closures and travel restrictions, the ability for ESRs to progress with physical research activities has been severely limited. Most ESRs are now working from home with no definite timeline for when they can restart these elements of their work.

For most ESRs, the inability to work on their research in a lab or partake in research based travel (including delays to secondments, see below), will have some effects on timeframes for completion of the work. Currently all ESRs are still working to the original work plans and timelines but this may change as time progresses.

Workshops

Three Workshops were planned for this year:

• 1. Groningen - Monday 23rd - Saturday 30th March

     1. • We are hoping to rearrange this Workshop to Autumn 2020 or Spring 2021

  2. Vigo - Monday 22nd - Friday 26th June, including the Mid-Term Meeting

     1. • This workshop is currently cancelled with alternative online courses running. The Mid-Term meeting is postponed until the Oslo Workshop.

  3. Oslo - Monday 14th - Friday 18th September

     1. • Currently going ahead as planned.

Secondments

8 of the 15 ESRs were due to start their first secondment before the end of August 2020. These will all need rearranging and/or modifications to be made. Further secondments will need to be rearranged should the travel restrictions and closed facilities continue into the Autumn and beyond. All but 2 of the ESRs were due to start their first secondment before the end of the year.

As countries start to re-open their facilities and travel restrictions are lifted, each ESR will consider with their supervisor/secondment supervisor the best course of action to accommodate the secondment/s at a later date if at all possible, modify the amount of time spent on secondment (if required), or as a last resort, reduce the number of secondments to fit into the available time (whilst at all times trying to minimise the impact on the ability to complete the action.