Tag Archives: MarDivA

One Ocean Week 2026 – our events

Another event-packed One Ocean Week is behind us, and the marine group has participated both on the science fair at Festingskaien as part of the Family day, and with an evening of talks on the exploration of marine life.


April 19th: Family Day

We brough with us several activities that we have created through the MarDivA-project. Most eye-catching and enticing was our (huge!) board game “Fjærelære” (“ShoreLore”?) which is normally only available for teachers to book for their students as part of a museum visit (this was also a popular event during the week, as the activity was offered daily at the museum).

Odette, one of the MarDivA-members from the museum communications department was game master extraordinaire, and did a wonderful job adapting the game on the fly so that everyone who wanted could have a go. We also brought with us our own version of the game “Guess who”. The third activity was an exclusive preview of what we have been developing this year; we have a beautiful drawing of the entire ocean, and various organisms that should be placed where they belong. The drawings here are made by local illustrator Gunvor Rasmussen, who we have hired as part of MarDivA.

Finally, we had a table for colouring pages of a variety of ocean animals, always a popular activity.

collage showing the activities described in the text; the drawings are in a fun, colourful, watercolour style
Many activities to choose from at our stand at the Family Day!

April 23rd: Evening talks at Litteraturhuset

The University Museum once again invited the public to join us on an evening of exploring marine life as part of One Ocean Week here in Bergen. The event was held at Litteraturhuset, a lovely venue that we filled close to capacity!

Sophie introduced the marine research that is going on at the museum, followed by five 15-minute talks about our study organisms (/favourite critters!).

Six images showing the people who took the stage, each in front of one of their slides
Event organiser Sophie and the five presenters in action.

The talks and speakers were:

  • Seaweeds: Foundation Species and Future Ocean Resources (Elena)
  • Slugs: Extravagance & Drugs in a Nutshell (Manuel)
  • Amphipoda: From Beach-Hoppers to Deep-Sea Giants (Anne Helene)
  • Jellyfish vs. Salmon: Coexistence or Collision? (Luis)
  • Exploring the diversity of moss animals (Bryozoa) in Norway (Katrine)

We ended with a Q&A session with great audience participation.

Three images in a collage: on eis the event advertisement image, which shows: an red crustacean, a white, coral-like colony of bryozoa, a green algae, a white, etheral jellysgish, and a white-and-orange sea slug on a black background, with the texts "Secrets of the Sea" in the centre
Q&A session after the talks, with an enthusiastic audience

Thank you so much to all the audience at both events, and for your ocean enthusiasm!

-Katrine


If you would like to know more about the topics we covered in the talks, you can start here:

Seaweeds

Manet Team: Cnidaria and Ctenophora research | UiB

Mollusca Research | UiB

Bryozoa/moss animals (also on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nordigbryo/)  

#AmphipodThursday (sjekk også norske poster #TangloppeTorsdag om du leser det, og her om det nyeste norske prosjektet på tanglopper: MADAM)

One Ocean Week plans 2026

The marine team at the University museum has a rich and varied track record of events during the annual week long ocean-themed festival Bergen throws.

This year, look for our stand at the Family Day (Sunday April 19th), or come to our talks on Thursday April 23rd at Litteraturhuset: Secrets of the Sea – Discovering marine life – One Ocean Week

Hope to see you there!

One Ocean Week 2025 – Family Day, April 6th, Festningskaien

the bark Statsraad Lehmkuhl docked in Bergen.

The three-masted barque Statsraad Lehmkuhl, decked out for a week of ocean festivities. Photo: Katrine Kongshavn

The “Ocean City Bergen” was especially ocean-themed between April 5th to 11th during the annual One Ocean Week.

One Ocean Week – held every April – features more than 150 events, stretching from conferences, summits and meetings to family experiences and cultural activities.

The marine group of the Natural History Department wanted in on the fun this year as well*, and signed up to run two activities:

🎪🧪🔬a big stand at the outdoor science fair on Family Day, and
✨🪼🪱💚 an evening event with a series of short popular science talks in the Literature House on April 9th.

 

 

Going chronologically, we start with a post about the FAMILY DAY, which took place on Festningskaien on Sunday April 6th.

Black background, main feature is a shark jaw with the text "meet the marine biologists if the university museum and the animals they study", and various invertebrate animas (a snal, a jellyfish, a yellow worm and a pink crustacean) dotted about

Photos: Joan J. Soto-Angel (UiB), Katrine Kongshavn (UiB), Ross Robertson (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama)

We brought five activities:

Jellyfish doctor 🪼🩺

Bipolar animals 🐧🗺️🐻‍❄️

A homemade marine edition of the “Guess Who?” game 😶‍🌫️

Micro-snails and coloring plates 🐌🎨🖍️

A game of trying to “Guess the baby” belonging to various marine animals based on their baby pictures. 👶->😊   🐛->🦀

five photos of kid-friendly activities with marine theme; see caption for details

Images of the five different activities: a) Guess Who? b) Guess the baby, c) Bipolar animals, d) jellyfish doctor e) colouring of microgastropoda (Photos: Katrine Kongshavn, Praveen Raj)

It is so, so impressive to see how quickly kids grasp the different concepts, and how much they know already!

Even so, there’s always something new to learn – and it’s really fun to get to be the one to teach someone something cool about what lives in the sea!

We had a steady stream of kids – and adults! – wanting to test out the various activities, and the hours flew by!

A collage of photos showing the activities in play

A lot of thought (and crafting!) has gone into the activities to make them both fun and educational, so it was great to see that they were popular! Photos: Nataliya Budaeva, Katrine Kongshavn, Vincent McDaniel

Thank you so much both to our wonderful team of students and staff that made and ran the activities, and all the visitors!

-Katrine


Our other event,  “Exploring marine life”, gets a post to itself, you can find it here:

One Ocean Week 2025 – “Exploring marine life”

*We were also very active during OOW 2024 – you can read more about that here:

One Ocean Week 2024