What does marine growth look like at the other side of the Atlantic? Now students from Öckerö upper secondary high school in Sweden can answer that question.
Two weeks ago the Swedish high school students and their ship T/S Gunilla arrived in Charleston, joined forces with local US students and together they investigated Virtue racks that had been placed in the harbour area last year. Adam Frederick (to the left in the picture) helped with the species identification. Adam, who is from the University of Maryland - Sea Grant office, initiated the school project already in the 1990’s together with the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) and the University of Bergen (Norway).
During the stay in Charleston, specially designed Virtue discs were attached to T/S Gunilla by Arnold Postell, a biologist and a diver at the South Carolina Aquarium. The idea is for the discs (see picture) to be removed from the ship when it reaches Portsmouth (12th of June) and then the marine growth will be studied by British and Swedish students. The Swedish project leaders of Virtue (Mikael Olsson and Susan Gotensparre) will be in Portsmouth to give a helping hand.