Baltic Sea Day activities at Kello School

At the shores of the Baltic Sea 

On the 27 August we celebrated the international Baltic Sea Day by taking the school kids from Kello school to the shores of the Baltic Sea, specifically to a small boat harbor in the northern Baltic Sea in Finland. Weather cooperated the whole day while me, Suvi and Toivo received one 6th or 7th class after another from morning till afternoon.

I am Essi Keskinen, a marine biologist at Metsähallitus Parks and Wildlife Finland. Our government organization Metsähallitus manages the state-owned land and water areas, national parks and conservation areas. My job is to do underwater marine species and habitat mapping and use that knowledge to try and best manage the Bothnian Bay underwater nature for future generations.

My colleague Suvi Saarnio from ELY-center (Center for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment) is a special planner and a marine specialist. Her job, in addition to underwater mapping, is to work in a Finnish-Swedish cooperation project SeaCOMBO where they try to make a restoration plan for marine nature types and habitats for the northern Bothnian Bay.

One of Suvi's hobbies is to volunteer at Search and Rescue, which is a volunteer organization which does marine search and rescue operations in the Finnish coast. Toivo Polso is also a volunteer at Oulu Search and Rescue and he was there to show the kids how to throw a life ring and when to do that.

Underwater nature

We explained to the kids the special underwater nature of the Bothnian Bay - even though it’s the northernmost part of the Baltic Sea, it differs from the other parts considerably. Bothnian Bay has almost fresh water instead of brackish water, the water is very brown because of humic acids and tannins from the large bogs, mires and timber industry areas in the huge catchment area, and the sea freezes almost every winter completely.

In addition to this, the land uplift phenomenon, caused by the ice age and the continental glacier pressing the land first down and now the land slowly lifting up after the ice has melted, is making the sea retreat further away, about 8-9 vertical millimeters per year. These factors make the Bothnian Bay underwater nature very special in the whole world.

Learning about the equipment 

We let the kids try throwing the life ring (not as easy as you’d think), do knots and try to guess, what various marine biologist’s equipment are for. Water binocular was a completely bizarre concept to most of the kids, but the most surprising item turned out to be our underwater writing pad. We use a regular cutting board where we tape a waterproof paper (or a plastic actually) to the pad and write on it with a pencil while scuba diving. The name tag the kids had to attach to this device was “Writing pad” and the explanation said “For taking notes underwater”. Even though there were pencils attached to the writing pad, most of the kids didn’t understand that it could be used for writing underwater. We had really interesting discussions about the different equipment and their use and received a lot of questions.

What can we do to protect the Baltic Sea

The last part of the exercise was when the kids discussed, what they could do for the benefit of the Baltic Sea and what the society or the politicians could do. “How can I help the Baltic Sea to heal?” The answers are compiled in the table, the red ones being things that the society or the authorities could do and the black ones being things the kids themselves could do.

Turns out, the kids know very well what to do to make the Baltic Sea feel better. Many answered, “don’t litter”, “don’t use disposable plastics”, “eat less meat and more local sustainable fish” and “use less and recycle”. “Don’t use private cars but walk, bicycle or take public transportation instead” was another popular answer. Wise kids!

We even got a small lesson about the problems the marine plastics and especially ghost nets (fishing nets abandoned but still at sea) can cause. Someone saw a small perch (a common Finnish fish) struggling at the dock. It turned out that there was a small piece of a plastic fishing net where the small fish had entangled itself. It was still very much alive, and we could free it so this story had a happy ending (this time), but there are tons of discarded and escaped ghost nets fishing in the Baltic Sea as we speak.

The day was extremely rewarding, at least to me and my colleagues, and hopefully for the kids as well. We have a generation of kids growing up while being aware of the problems of the Baltic Sea and hopefully doing something about it as well.

Essi Keskinen, Metsähallitus Parks and Wildlife Finland