The SponGES 2019 General Assembly Meeting (GAM) just concluded in a sunny Wageningen (The Netherlands)!

Over 60 participants discussed progress in deep-sea sponge grounds research and future steps, covering topics such as: mapping and habitat characterization, biodiversity from microbes to macrofauna, -omics, speciation and connectivity, reproduction, biogeochemistry, trophic ecology, associated fauna, ecosystem services and valuation, human impacts and potential for recovery, data management and integration (by the way, did you check out our repositories in the Zenodo, Pangaea and SponGIS databases?), modelling, policy and decision making, biotechnology, and much more. What an intense week!