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World Water Day March 22nd

2013 is the International Year of Water Cooperation.
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Therefore, you can expect a lot of activities on World Water Day, coming up on March 22nd.

At Stockholm University, there will be a series of short, captivating lectures from scientists all working in, on and with water.

Seaweed expert professor Lena Kautsky will give a talk on the reproduction of bladderwrack and why it is important in relation to the management of our coastlines.

A programme in Swedish can be found here.

There will also be a startup to World Water Day at Aquaria Water Museum on the 21st, more information on this will follow.

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Into the deep

Here is a clip from the “seaweed-bed” at the Askö laboratory, where most of our experiments are going on. This was filmed in january 2012, with the purpose of checking on the bed, change light/temperature sensor and collect some plates for measure of juvenile growth.

The bed holds about 60 ceramic tiles, onto which we have “sown” bladderwrack and some other wrack crosses. We use the non-glazed side of the tiles since it is important that the surface is porous enough for the seaweed eggs to attach. This makes for some interesting conversations when we buy tiles!

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The BalticSeaWeed blog featured in German press

In October, my good friend Naomi Fearn, talented German comicbook creator, accompanied me out to the Askö Marine Laboratory. I figured that if you are living in Berlin, you need all you can get of forrest, sea and seasonal fungi. Also, I needed some assistance with marking seaweed with needle and thread to monitor growth, before it should be placed out into the sea over the winter.

It was a lovely autumn day and Askö really shone in the warm sun, with the water like a mirror, the trees glowing and the skye incredibly blue. The water was 7 degrees Celsius and Naomi got to feel what a day in the life of a marine biologist can be like.

Autumn at Askö

Safely back home in Berlin, Naomi processed her experiences from our fieldtrip int a comic strip, published in the daily newspaper Stuttgarter Zeitung, where she does the Thursday comics. You can find the lovely strip on the blog Zuckerfisch

On the blog is also some photos from our seaweed sowing. Use Google Translate if your German is as rusty as mine.

P.S if you don’t know who the rabbit refers to in the strip, you can read up on Rüdiger Nehberg here.