Campus do Mar will repeat for the ninth consecutive year as scientific summer Campus

The campus of international excellence of the University of Vigo Campus del Mar was selected for the ninth consecutive year by the Ministry of Education and Professional Training to participate in the Summer Science Campus Program, aimed at students with the best records of 4th ESO and 1st High School in Spain. The new edition of the program will be developed in a dozen venues, among them the campus of Vigo, specifically the faculties of Biology and Ciencias del Mar, as well as the Toralla Marine Sciences Station (ECIMAT), thanks to the support of the European Union (ERDF Operational Program Galicia 2014-2020), and the Oceanographic Center of Vigo. “Being selected one more year for this program, confirms the interest in marine science topics among the best students of 4th ESO and 1st High School in Spain. This gives them the possibility to show the type of research and resources available to the University in the marine scientific field, and generate a climate in which students interact very closely with researchers who are advancing knowledge in this field, “explains Daniel Rey, director of Campus del Mar and the Marine Research Center of the University of Vigo (CIM-Uvigo).

In addition to Vigo, the Summer Scientific Campus Program will be h this year in eleven other Spanish cities, which will host more than forty scientific approach projects between June 28 and July 25.

From the identification of marine species with genetic techniques to the evaluation of sea health

After being selected for the first time in 2011 to take part in the Summer Science Campus Program and since then exceed a thousand participants, Campus del Mar will develop this year four scientific approach projects for the selected students: Health assessment at sea ; A beach: much more than sand and water; And whose are you? and invade us, and now what?

In the Faculty of Biology and the Oceanographic Center of Vigo and by the hand of the scientists of the areas of Plant and Animal Biology and Ecology, the participants in the project And whose are you? they will learn to identify through genetic techniques the species and subspecies of the intertidal zone and others with which they work in aquaculture, with special attention to turbot, “something very useful, for example, to differentiate species that are impossible to distinguish at first sight, which is essential to improve traceability and avoid fraud in the marketing of seafood”, explains Daniel Rey. On the other hand, in the project They invade us, and now what? The central theme is one of the main effects associated with global change, such as the extent and consequences of invasive species. This project will also be developed in the Faculty of Biology, in the Department of Plant Biology and Soil Sciences.

For its part, the Faculty of Marine Sciences will host the other two projects. The Biological Oceanographic Group of the CIM-UVigo will develop a simplified version of an oceanographic sampling campaign with participants in the Health Assessment at Sea, studying a series of useful variables for the evaluation of environmental quality of the waters under study. “The project includes sample collection, through the realization with an oceanographic campaign and subsequent laboratory work. The campaign, which will consist of an exit to the Vigo estuary aboard the Kraken I vessel, will introduce students to the use of different usual instruments in oceanography and in the collection of data on the physical-chemical conditions of the water column and the sampling for the biological characterization of the studied areas and for the determination of the existence of harmful marine microbes”, details the director of Campus del Mar.

Finally in A beach: much more than sand and water and with the support of the Department of Marine Geosciences, the students will be able, through the sediments found on a beach, to know a great deal of information, in order to get acquainted with the sedimentology, also showing the basic descriptive parameters of a sediment to understand its relationship with coastal dynamics. Emphasis will also be placed on the relationship between current processes that can be observed, both in the field of work, as in the laboratory and their fossil record.

Source: DUVI