From February 6 to February 8, the Winter School of the Floating University-2023 All-Russian project was held in Sevastopol. The main locations of the School were the Marine Hydrophysical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Professor Vodyanitsky research vessel (the A.O. Kovalevsky Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas). The project program included the broadcasting of lectures by leading oceanologists speaking at other venues, face-to-face lectures by scientists from Federal Research Centers – MHI and IBSS, workshops, master classes and excursions.

35 students and young specialists from 12 Russian cities, representing 15 universities and scientific institutions, participated in the Winter School in Sevastopol. On the first and final days of the project, excursions to the Museum of the Marine Hydrophysical Institute, conversations about the disciplines and the rules for admission to the Master’s degree program and postgraduate studies of MHI were held for them in the format of the preview day.

The main disciplines of the Sevastopol location were remote sensing of the ocean, dynamic mesoscale processes in the Arctic, ecotoxicology of the World Ocean. Also, during the training intensive, students were given lectures on fixing the manifestation of short-period internal waves on satellite images of the Arctic, automated methods for studying plankton, ecotoxicological methods for assessing the state of the marine environment, methods for conducting environmental studies from small size vessels, and designing research results for the preparation of scientific publications. The topics of master classes and practical studies included methods for assessing the state of aquatic ecosystems, interpretation of satellite images, and visualization of oceanographic data.

The Winter School is the first stage of the annual cycle of the Floating University. The future oceanologists coped with it successfully. The next stage is approaching, namely, their participation in the competitive selection, on completion of which the best students of the Winter School will have the opportunity to go on a sea expedition this year.