A small-sized navigational vehicle for nature cognition research will be unveiled at the Nature House

From 3:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., everyone – young people, students, educators, environmental science enthusiasts, especially families with children – is invited to get to know the material and technical base of the watercraft and its future prospects.

Since it will be possible for a limited number of people to get on the watercraft at the same time, in parallel, free outdoor workshops and activities related to nature and environmental research will be provided throughout the day, which will be implemented by Dabas māja, Latvian Institute of Hydroecology (LHEI), Latvian Rural Consultation and Education Center (LLKC ) and Fisheries Cooperation Network (ZST).

The exposition of the interactive installations of the nature house will also be open to visitors, while in the outdoor workshops you will be able to learn the basics of sailor knots and play the strategy game “Sea Explorers”.

In the LHEI workshop, you will be able to get to know alien species and learn more about marine protected areas, ecotoxicology and pharmaceuticals. On the other hand, LLKC and ZST workshops will be related to fish recognition.

The name of the watercraft is made from a compound – the Latin word “aqua” with the meaning “water” and “laboratorium” with the meaning “laboratory”, which together form the word “water laboratory”, while the local name “Liepāja” is included in the name to promote the recognition of the location of the watercraft in the national and at the international level.

“The watercraft is intended only for educational purposes and scientific research activities and it can also be considered as an educational innovation for the achievement of general educational goals.

In the future, students will be able to carry out the lessons of subjects such as “Science” and “Biology” together with their teachers on a boat, and teachers of mathematics and technology fields will also find related topics to learn,” emphasizes Kitija Kuduma, Acting Deputy Head of the Education Department.

“On a daily basis, for example, we will collect samples of water and the organisms in it – zooplankton, phytoplankton, benthos – with such water research tools as a plankton net, bathometer, scraper, seki disc and others, and we will also carry out such physicochemical measurements of water transparency, pH level , using a pH meter probe, oxygen and other measurements, but we will return all the obtained aquatic organisms back to the Liepāja lake without causing them any harm,” adds Sniedze Više, an environmental expert at the House of Nature.

“The work on the floating vehicle as one of the most important interactive installations of the Nature House started with the start of the EEZ/N project, however, the adaptation of the engineering solutions to the Liepāja lake, as well as the number of companies that were ready to get involved in the realization of the object, took much more time than originally planned, in addition similar to how the Nature House is designed as an object of environmental accessibility, the aspects of environmental accessibility are also observed in the watercraft as much as possible,” says project manager Laura Grundmane.

“An automated water research tool such as an aquascope is also built into the vessel, and by immersing it in certain seasons and weather conditions, it will become much more possible to get to know the underwater world,” reveals L. Grundmane.