The Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS)

SAMS science focuses on three major and urgent challenges which humankind and our natural world must face:

  • to discover the physical, chemical, geological, and biological processes that drive the marine system so that we have the knowledge needed…
  • to describe and quantify how our coastal environment, where more than half the human population resides, responds to ever-increasing man-made pressures such as climate change, habitat destruction, pollution, and resource overexploitation and to work with society on developing and testing mitigation and adaptation measures, and finally
  • to develop a sustainable blue economy so that we can use the marine environment for the benefit of people without degrading its health and productivity.

To address these major challenges SAMS science is multi-disciplinary, drawing on the expertise from physicists, mathematicians, biologists, geologists, chemists, social scientists, computer scientists, technologists, engineers, and communicators.

The SAMS ongoing project in the Arctic is Active Productivity in the Seasonal Ice Zone (Arctic PRIZE), funded by NERC (2017-2021).