Our group represented the Department of Biosciences at UiO and Arven etter Nansen at this year’s Forskningstorget in Oslo as part of Forskningsdagene (Norwegian Science Week). The goal was to make invisible pollution in the oceans visible to the public and highlight chemical pollution both in urban areas and in the Arctic. School classes and families visited our stand and were keen on learning!
At our stand small, hands on experiments were conducted to show how human made chemicals enter the environment, how they are transported to remote and pristine places like the Arctic, and how they can be transferred up the food chain.
Another activity was to find out which specific adaption makes Arctic marine mammals highly vulnerable to chemical pollution. The magic word is blubber, a thick layer of fat underneath the skin that serves insulation and energy storage purposes. Many synthetic chemicals are lipophilic (“fat-loving”), which means they adsorb to the fatty tissue. Marine mammals depend on a thick layer of fat to stay warm, but this layer also accumulates and stores many potentially toxic chemicals. To illustrate the importance of the blubber layer, the visitors of the stand got to perform a “blubber glove” experiment, to physically notice the difference in insulation. To do so, they placed one hand in a glove containing vegetable fat (to simulate the blubber) and then dipped the glove hand in ice-cold water. The other, bare hand was placed in the ice-cold water at the same time, to compare the differences in insulation.
A big thank you goes out to our fantastic team including Håvard N. Liholt, Clare Andvik, Gunnvor Evenrud, Malin Røyset Aarønes, Karoline Saubrekka, Nina Knudtzon, Helene Thorstensen and Julia Giebichenstein!