A field school organized by the University Centre of the Westfjords and SuWaCo (Sustainable Waters and Coastal Bodies network) visited Reykhólar last week. At Reykhólar students worked on innovation projects that were mostly focused on seaweed, kelp and algae which is understandable since Reykhólar is the capital of seaweeds in Iceland.

The students worked for a whole week with María Maack in Reykhólar on innovative use of algae and kelp. This work opened the student’s eyes to a wide range of possibilities to utilize these resources that are not or to a small extent in place today. One group worked on nutrient removal of eutrophic water, others on production of algae as super food, and again others on production of disposable cutlery made of agar-agar, what again is made from kelp.

The Field School was part of the Nordplus-cooperation network SuWaCo (Sustainable Waters and Coastal Bodies), which the University Centre is a part of amongst Novia University of Applied Sciences in Finland,  the Estonian University of Life Sciences, Aleksadras Stulginskis University í Lithuania as well as Latvia’s agricultural university.

This field school bears its name with right, in spite of the time of the year: Students were out in the field, for example out in the mud-flats and the tidal zone. Moreover, they visited relevant companies and travelled for that end amongst other places to Hólmavík and Drangsnes. More traditional teaching was held at the company Sjávarsmiðjan, the kelp-baths in Reykhólar. Students had lunch in the Reykhólar primary schools cantine and found that very interesting as they felt that all groups of the small society in Reykhólar met there during the week.