"Ocean Acidification" school laboratory on Heligoland

During the first week on the is­land, the stu­dents of the Elite Grad­uate Pro­gram "MINT-Lehramt PLUS" con­cen­trated on the prepa­ra­tions for the school class. In the course of the prepa­ration pro­cess, exper­iments and meth­ods were de­veloped, dis­card­ed, rede­veloped and finally re­fined. We also gained deep­er and very valu­able in­sights into AWI re­search. The fol­low­ing days were spent sam­pling and col­lecting data in the North Har­bor, where we fo­cused on plank­ton and abiot­ic fac­tors, such as tem­pera­ture, pH, etc. We fished for plank­ton in dif­ferent groups and meas­ured the water depth using a Sec­chi disk. The col­lected plank­ton was then exten­sively exam­ined under bin­ocu­lars in the labor­atory and a com­pre­hen­sive spe­cies list was com­piled.

An "egg race" on the topic of ocean acidi­fica­tion got the pupils in the right mood. With the help of a box of dif­ferent mate­rials, the young peo­ple were able to get crea­tive them­selves, de­velop their own plans and famil­iarize them­selves with the labor­atory mate­rials avail­able. At the same time, they were en­couraged to think about the pro­cesses that lead to ocean acidi­fica­tion and to imi­tate them on a small scale.

The stu­dents were then able to deep­en their un­der­stand­ing of ocean acidi­fica­tion in a more scien­tific way with the help of vari­ous exper­iments. It was par­ticu­larly im­portant for us to then place the exper­iments in a broader con­text and dis­cuss to­gether which pro­cesses take place at the inter­face be­tween the ocean and the at­mosphere. The exper­iments clear­ly showed that more alka­line sea­water can ab­sorb a great­er amount of CO2 than tap and dis­tilled water. The sea­water in the ocean has a natu­ral buff­ering effect due to the hy­drogen car­bonate and car­bonate ions it con­tains. As a result, the pH value in sea­water drops less sharp­ly when CO2 is added than in tap water. If the above-men­tioned ions are added to the sea­water, this buff­ering effect is fur­ther en­hanced. This pro­vides an op­por­tunity to coun­teract the acidi­fica­tion of the oceans. How­ever, this is not a per­ma­nent solu­tion, as the CO2 from the at­mosphere caused by hu­mans can­not be com­plete­ly bound - the amount of car­bonate ions re­quired would be unre­alistic. Ex­peri­ments on the tem­pera­ture de­pendence of the buff­ering effect have shown that the solu­bility of CO2 de­creas­es with in­creas­ing water tem­pera­ture. There is there­fore a risk of an inten­sify­ing cycle due to the an­thropogen­ic greenhouse ef­fect, tem­pera­ture in­crease and addi­tional CO2 out­gas­sing from the oceans

With a mys­tery, we want­ed to give the stu­dents the op­por­tunity to visu­alize the com­plex con­nec­tions be­tween cli­mate change, ocean acidi­fica­tion, the ma­rine eco­sys­tem and socie­ty. Work­ing in groups, the young peo­ple worked to­gether to put the cards, con­sisting of 1-2 sen­tences and a pic­ture, into a logi­cal order. In doing so, they were able to deal with vari­ous as­pects of the topic, from the causes of cli­mate change to the ef­fects on the oceans and the at­mosphere. This type of dis­cussion not only pro­moted their un­der­stand­ing of the topic, but also their ability to think inde­pen­dently and solve prob­lems.

In a self-developed role-play in the con­text of edu­cation for sus­taina­ble de­velopment (ESD), the ques­tion was how Heli­go­land can and should be­come CO2-neutral. The aim of the role play was to de­velop a joint, bind­ing plan that can be im­ple­ment­ed. After a pre­para­tory phase in which the young peo­ple were able to famil­iarize them­selves with the inter­ests and mo­tives of their new roles, the actual game phase be­gan. The pupils took part in the role play with en­thusi­asm and came up with sensi­ble com­prom­ises and con­crete plans, some of which are actu­ally being dis­cuss­ed in the mu­nici­pality of Heli­go­land. In the sub­se­quent reflec­tion phase, how­ever, the results of the two groups were not only com­pared with each other, but also dis­cuss­ed on a met­a-level about the role play and the per­sonal expe­rienc­es of im­mers­ing one­self in a dif­ferent role.

Our time at the OPENSEA stu­dent labor­atory on Heli­go­land was un­doubtedly an un­for­getta­ble and edu­cational expe­rience. In the midst of Heli­go­land's breathtaking na­ture, we not only expe­rienced the beau­ty of the is­land, but also the im­portance of extra­cur­ricular places of learn­ing at first hand. The school labor­atory on Heli­go­land - a place of learn­ing, re­search and dis­covery - offers a unique op­por­tunity to raise awareness of issues relat­ed to changes in the oceans.

Text: Dr. Ni­cole Wolf, Mar­cel Em­mert, Mirja Hüßler, To­bias Schmidt, Marlyn Wei­mer, Pat­rick Schmitt und Lena Ad­el­sper­ger, Elite Grad­uate Pro­gram „MINT-Leh­ramt PLUS“