On Saturday, April 27, the Liepaja Municipal Education Department Science and Education Innovation Center (ZIIC) has unveiled the most time-consuming and engineering-technically complex result of the European Economic Area and Norway (EEA/N) project “Development of the Innovation Center in the Liepaja city” in Lake Liepaja – a small-sized navigational vehicle for natural cognition research, which will henceforth be known to the public as Watercraft “AkvaLab Liepāja”.
For visitors free outdoor workshops and activities related to nature and environmental research were provided throughout the opening day, which were implemented by Nature House, 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 was also open to visitors, while in the outdoor workshops everyone could learn the basics of sailor knots and play the strategy game “Sea Explorers”. In the LHEI workshop, visitors could get to know alien species and learn more about marine protected areas, ecotoxicology and pharmaceuticals whereas LLKC and ZST workshops were related to fish recognition.
The name of the watercraft is formed from a compound – the Latin word “akva” with the meaning “water” and “laboratorium” with the meaning “laboratory”, which together form the word “water laboratory”, while the place 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 can also be considered as an educational innovation for the achievement of general educational goals. In the future, students and teachers will be able to carry out the lessons of subjects such as “Natural Sciences” and “Biology” on the Watercraft, in addition, educators in the fields of mathematics and technology 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 Watercraft 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 the way the Nature House is designed as an object of environmental accessibility, the aspects of environmental accessibility are respected as much as possible in the Watercraft,” 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.
Along with the opening of the AkvaLab Liepāja Watercraft, the EEA/N grant program “Research and Education” project “Development of the Innovation Center in Liepāja city” also comes to an end. The total cost of this project is EUR ir 1 025 341,78 of which EUR 784 386,37 is co-financing from Norwegian grants, EUR 138 421,13 is co-financing from the Latvian state budget, and EUR 102 534,28 is co-financing from the municipality of Liepaja.
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