Five years of the student laboratory OPENSEA at the AWI’s Helgoland facilities: since 2014, Germany’s only island in the open sea has given interested school classes the opportunity to actively explore marine flora and fauna at a student laboratory. Six years ago, the first group of schoolchildren visited the AWI Helgoland to collect and analyse samples from the mudflats. The children were supported by a small team from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI).
This first attempt to introduce schoolchildren to marine research through practical experience was a success, leading to the official opening of the student laboratory OPENSEA one year later. Ever since, the project has steadily evolved and the team has grown considerably. The student laboratory’s goal is to spark schoolchildren’s interest in the natural sciences by pursuing a research-based and discovery-based approach, chiefly focusing on marine research. Participating school classes accompany the team from the student lab OPENSEA out in the field, where they are curious and thrilled to collect samples on their own, record data, look for specific organisms on Helgoland’s rocky mudflats, and gain unique new experiences.
From elementary-school students who learned about the differences between marine and limnetic ecosystems on Freshwater & Seawater Day, OPENSEA has since expanded its programme for older students: today, teens from across Germany can, through class groups, spend a week intensively investigating the marine ecosystem on Helgoland’s unique mudflats, or learning more about plastic in the environment at the student lab. In fact, the OPENSEA team’s activities now reach to South America: as part of the Humboldt Year, they jointly offered workshops in Brazil with the Goethe-Institut in late 2019.
Together with the James-Krüss School, the Jordsand Association and the Bluehouse Association, every year the international “World Ocean Day” event is hosted on the island. Thanks to the numerous collaborations, it often leads to new plans on how to portray the marine environment as something highly valuable and worth protecting. In addition, there are many smaller projects: support is provided for interns, candidates for the research initiative “Jugend forscht”, the winners of MINT competitions, and schoolchildren’s research papers. For the future, new laboratory rooms that offer more space for exciting projects are planned. The demand for the services offered at the AWI’s student OPENSEA is growing constantly, and the team looks forward to what the future holds.