News of EducaPoles
This section presents the latest news on the International Polar Foundation's educational activities and projects. It also contains general interest news on the polar regions, climate change and sustainable development for the educational world. Our RSS feeds will inform you when news are published on this website.
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Educapoles - the 5th episode of the interactive Comic Book is available
11.12.2006
In 2006, a comic book on climate and environmental changes was published by the International Polar Foundation, through a collaboration with the WWF and the University of Geneva. This educational tool, meant for youngsters, comes with educational files for teachers. An interactive version of this comic book is currently beeing designed and progressively made available online. The 5th episode just came out!
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Polarstern / CAML expedition: first biological samples from the seafloor
10.12.2006
Finally some work for the benthos (organisms living on the bottom) fanatics: this afternoon, we had our first Agassiz trawl on the deck. After having scoured the bottom 300 m below, the net brought back a typical sample of sponge communities, quite common in Atka Bay. These sponges dominating the underwater landscape are big (up to 60 cm high) and robust, thanks to their silica skeleton, which is nothing but…
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Polarstern / CAML expedition: stuck in the ice
07.12.2006
First sight when we get up: an ice wall slowly passing by behind the port-hole. Is this already the ice shelf (floating ice platform, prolonging polar glaciers in the ocean) ? No, it's only one of the biggest tabular icebergs observed until now. But the ice shelf is further behind, on the horizon. This means that we are now sailing west along the coast to reach Atka Bay, where the…
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Polarstern / CAML expedition: neverending sunset
06.12.2006
Getting back to the presentations today. These are an opportunity for me to reconnect with old friends. This time it was through the speech of Cedric and Henri, my collegues from the Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences, who presented the amphipod crustaceans (the group to which belong the sandhoppers). Numerous species of this group show gigantism in Antarctica, this is what brought me on my first Polarstern expedition in…
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Polarstern / CAML expedition: the Polar Antarctic Circle
05.12.2006
A real Sunday, except for the sun, which was mostly hidden today. When a report begins with the weather, it is not a good sign ! And indeed it was a really quiet day, the Polarstern is saling through the ice, disturbing a few seals and penguins here and there. Thankfully, whales do provide us with some highlights: at the end of the afternoon, Lynn made her first observation of…
