The University of Vigo’s international excellence campus, Campus do Mar, has been selected for the ninth consecutive year by the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training to participate in the Summer Science Campus Program, aimed at students with the best grades in 4th year of ESO and 1st year of Baccalaureate from all over Spain. The new edition of the program will be held in a dozen locations, including the Vigo campus, specifically the faculties of Biology and Marine Sciences, as well as at the Toralla Marine Sciences Station (Ecimat), thanks to the support of FEDER funds (operating program 2014-2020), and at the Vigo Oceanographic Center. “Being selected for this program for another year confirms the interest in marine science topics among the best 4th year of ESO and 1st year of Baccalaureate students from all over Spain. This gives us the opportunity to show the type of research and resources that the University has in the marine science field, and to generate a climate in which students interact very closely with researchers who are advancing knowledge in this field”, explains Daniel Rey, director of Campus do Mar and the Marine Research Center of the University of Vigo (CIM-UVigo).
In addition to Vigo, the Summer Scientific Campus Program will be developed this year in eleven other Spanish cities, which will host more than forty scientific outreach projects between June 28 and July 25.
From identifying marine species with genetic techniques to assessing sea health
After being selected for the first time in 2011 to take part in the Summer Scientific Campus Program and since then exceeding one thousand participants, Campus do Mar will develop four scientific outreach projects this year for the selected students: Health assessment at sea; A beach: much more than sand and water; And you, whose are you? training They invade us, now what?
At the Faculty of Biology and the Oceanographic Centre of Vigo and with the help of scientists from the areas of Plant and Animal Biology and Ecology, participants in the project Who are you from? will learn to identify, through genetic techniques, the species and subspecies of the intertidal zone and others that are used in aquaculture, with special attention to turbot, “something very useful, for example, to differentiate species that at first glance are impossible to distinguish, which is essential to improve traceability and avoid fraud in the marketing of seafood products”, explains Daniel Rey. For its part, in the project Invádennos, e agora que? the central theme is one of the main effects associated with global change, such as the extension and consequences of invasive species. This project will also be developed at 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 Oceanography Group of the CIM-UVigo will develop with the participants in Assessment of health at sea a simplified version of an oceanographic sampling campaign, studying a series of variables useful for the assessment of the environmental quality of the waters under study. “The project includes sample collection, through an oceanographic campaign and subsequent laboratory work. The campaign, which will consist of a trip to the Vigo estuary aboard the Kraken I vessel, will introduce students to the use of different instruments commonly used in oceanography and the collection of data on the physical-chemical conditions of the water column and the taking of samples for the biological characterization of the areas studied and for the determination of the existence of harmful marine microbes”, details the director of Campus do Mar.
Finally, in A Beach: Much More Than Sand and Water and with the support of the Department of Marine Geosciences, students will be able to learn a great deal of information through the sediments found on a beach, with the aim of becoming familiar with sedimentology, also showing them 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 and in the laboratory, and their fossil record.
Source: DUVI
