Susana Agustí facts for kids

Susana Agustí Requena is a Spanish scientist who studies the ocean. She is a biological oceanographer, which means she learns about the living things in the ocean and how they interact with their environment.

Susana Agustí has traveled all over the world on more than 25 ocean trips! She has explored the cold Arctic and Southern Ocean (near Antarctica), as well as the warmer Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. She played a very important part in the Malaspina Circumnavigation Expedition, a huge journey around the world to study the oceans.

Today, she is a professor of Marine Science at King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia. She also teaches at the University of Tromsø in Norway.

Early Life and Education

Susana Agustí started her journey in science by studying at the Autonomous University of Madrid in Spain. She earned her first degree there in 1982. Later, she continued her studies at the same university and completed her PhD in 1989. This means she spent many years learning deeply about science before becoming a researcher.

Exploring Ocean Life and Climate Change

Susana Agustí's main work is studying tiny ocean plants called photosynthetic plankton. These tiny plants are super important because they help keep the ocean healthy and produce much of the oxygen we breathe. She also looks at the overall balance of life in the oceans.

One of her biggest goals is to understand how global warming is affecting our oceans. She has studied how rising temperatures are changing the Arctic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian Ocean.

Leading Ocean Expeditions

From 1992, Susana Agustí worked as a researcher for the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). During this time, she led the first Spanish ocean trip to the Arctic in 2007. She also led a project called "Arctic Tipping Points," which looked at how climate change affects the Arctic.

Between 2011 and 2015, she was a special professor at the Oceans Institute of the University of Western Australia. Since 2015, she has been a Professor of Marine Science at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.

Researching the Red Sea

Susana Agustí also studies the Red Sea, especially how warmer water temperatures affect it. She researches other things that can stress the ocean, like harmful UV-B radiation from the sun and pollution that travels through the air into the ocean. She also looks at how all these different problems work together.

Her main research topics include:

• How global changes impact the ocean.
• The study of living things in the ocean.
• How tiny ocean plants (phytoplankton) live and grow.
• The balance of energy in the open ocean.
• Ecosystems in the cold polar regions.
• How light travels through water and the effects of UV radiation.
• How ocean cells grow and die.

The Malaspina Expedition

In 2010, Susana Agustí was a lead scientist on one part of the Malaspina Circumnavigation Expedition. This huge journey involved more than 400 scientists from 10 different countries who sailed around the world to study the oceans. She was in charge of a special part of the project that focused on how light behaves in the ocean, and how phytoplankton grow and use energy.

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