AULAMAR
The classroom to the sea: the coastal oceanography school projectt.Aulamar is an educational project that won “La ciutat proactiva 2021”, project call of the Fundació BIT Habitat for urban innovation. This institution works in collaboration with the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC), Facultat de Nàutica de Barcelona (FNB-UPC), Club Patí Vela Barcelona, Unitat de Tecnologia Marina (UTM-CSIC) and the Institut d’Arquitectura Avançada de Catalunya.
The project seeks to find solutions to the double problem of Barcelona’s coastal ecosystem, namely its vulnerability due to the pressure of urban activity and climate change as well as the increasing tourist activity. The latter has led to less public awareness of Barcelona’s marine environment.
In this project, secondary school students receive scientific training within the framework of citizen science. The idea behind this experience is to provide new generations with the tools they need to understand the city’s coast and encourage critical thinking. It is a pilot programme aimed at making students protagonists of a real oceanographic research project. AULAMAR will lead students through the creation and implementation of a low-cost measurement system and the scientific planning of a sampling strategy for the coast of Barcelona.
The aim is thus twofold: to change citizen perception of Barcelona’s coast and to increase monitoring of coastal waters, a crucial action to gain knowledge about the anthropogenic impact on marine ecosystems.