SAMS news room

On Wednesday nearly 300 local people visited SAMS to learn about the marine environment and our research.

During the day 150 primary school children from eight local schools visited SAMS with their teachers and learnt about what it's like to be a marine scientist, about animals and plants on the seashore, about past climates and climate change, how to work in the Arctic, and even got a chance to slice a sediment core. The children also explored the deep sea and its weird and wonderful inhabitants, and found out about the many ways we make use of marine organisms, in particular seaweeds. We hoped to show the children that science is not primarily about textbook knowledge but the exciting pursuit of finding out something nobody else knows about our world.

Besides SAMS staff, both our first year undergraduate marine science students and some of our postgraduate research students 'edutained' the children to pass on their own excitement, enthusiasm, experiences, and also a bit of their knowledge and understanding.

During the evening we opened our doors for over 3 hours to visitors to show and explain our work. About 130 largely local visitors came, some of them children who had been here during the day and had pursuaded their parents to come too! Most active research areas we work on at SAMS were represented with displays and demonstrations, and scientists were at hand to explain and discuss their work. Talks ran throughout the evenings focussing on sounds in the sea, on conducting research in the Arctic, and on climate change on the west coast of Scotland.

SAMS runs an open evening or open day once a year - during National Science Week - but also exhibits at environment fairs and Highland Games. Besides welcoming groups of school children to the laboratory, we also visit both local primary and secondary schools whenever invited.