• Associate Professor
• Graduate School of Environmental Science, Hokkaido University

I am Taka Hirata, an associate professor at Hokkaido University, and have recently joined this exciting research project, the SKED. My specialty is Marine Optics, and I have been engaged in the satellite ocean colour remote sensing for several years. I will be working on “Theme 2: Phytoplankton species composition and productivity” in the SKED to classify and quantify phytoplankton community in the Kuroshio waters and to estimate their community-specific primary production by means of the earth observation. I am looking forward to working for the SKED, the interdisciplinary oceanographic project for the distinctive Kuroshio waters represented by one of the swiftest ocean current and the richest marine biodiversity in the world.