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The Biologische Anstalt Helgoland was founded in 1892. Since 1998 it has been part of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research. Researchers at the BAH investigate the ecology of our coastal and shelf-sea systems.

With the time series "Helgoland Roads", researchers at the AWI´s Helgoland facilities are working to gather the world´s most detailed collection of data on plankton. At the BAH they offer courses for pupils and university students alike, and work closely together with guest researchers who frequently visit the island. At the Centre for Scientific Diving scientists can learn to be research divers and practice working unterwater.

The Biologische Anstalt Helgoland is an integral part of the AWI, with a long history of its own. As early as 1835, the natural scientist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg proved that the sea glow around Helgoland is caused by the microscopic single-celled organism Noctiluca scintillans. The scientist Johannes Müller also recognised the island's potential: he founded plankton research on it in 1845.

Helgoland was designated a "Royal Biological Institute" by the Prussian Ministry of Culture in 1892. In the years that followed, it developed into an internationally acknowledged centre of marine biological research. Completely destroyed during the Second World War, the Biologische Anstalt Helgoland was reopened in 1959.

Coastal waters are highly variable ecosystems: changes occur at all time scales (from seconds to decades) and spatial scales (from millimetres to kilometres). Organisms living in such zones should be adapted to this large variation, but potentially not to the changes that are currently taking place in our coastal seas. Thus, coastal organisms represent the ideal case to contrast the effects of natural and non-natural variation in a multiple-stressor approach. The research in the section Shelf Sea System Ecologyputs the responses of individual organisms and species to these stressors, both in terms of physiology, ecology and evolution, into a population and community context.

What we offer our guest scientists on Helgoland

To support our guest scientists at the BAH, we provide lab space with basic equipment such as microscopes, a PC, cooling facilities and running sea water supplies. A limited bench fee will be charged for the use of these labs.

Requirements for more extensive facilities can be discussed with the technical supervisor Uwe Nettelmann (Uwe.Nettelmann@awi.de, +44 04725 8193212) and the guest scientist co-ordinator.

The proximity to the Helgoland rocky intertidal means that guest scientists can easily collect biological material for their studies. In addition, orders can be placed for the scientific dive team to collect further material from the sub littoral. Please place your orders directly with the dive centre (order form). Plankton can also be collected onboard our research vessels Aade and Uthörn. Collected plants and animals can be cultured in flow-through tanks and a constant temperature room can be booked for small experiments.

What we offer to the University courses on Helgoand

Two lecture rooms, offering 20 and 25 modern workplaces, are provided for teaching purposes to academic courses and workshops. Each workplace has a dissecting microscope and cold source lamp. Microscopes are also available (to be shared by two students). Oil immersion lenses are available upon request. A diverse supply of materials for working with living organisms, e.g. trays, aquaria, and glassware, are provided. Dissection kits and laboratory consumables have to be supplied by the courses themselves.

Several tanks with seawater connections are located in each lecture room, for cultivation of living organisms in a flow-through system. Each course room is also equipped with a fume hood. An additional cultivation room is provided in the basement of the Institute. Both lecture rooms have a small library (ca. 100 books), comprising the most pertinent identification keys and mainly phycology and ecology text books. A state of the art multimedia system is available in both course rooms. Two microscopes are connected to cameras and a beamer for presentations is also available. Camera images from the microscopes can be viewed on large wall screens either simultaneously or individually. A whiteboard has also been installed in both course rooms. Special paper and drying ovens are provided for those courses, which prepare herbariums on field-collected algae. If required, courses can use a ca. 4m² constant-temperature room with seawater connection and a laboratory with basic equipment(photometer, scale, extractor hood). Laboratory and fume hood use is compulsory if work with dangerous substances is planned (please download the 'Bulletin for handling chemical substances'). We kindly ask course instructors to register their requirements for the constant-temperature room and the laboratory well in advance. Please contact Mr Uwe Nettelmann (Uwe.Nettelmann@awi.de, Tel.: +49 4725-819 3212) for the organisation of technical issues.


The AWI`s Wadden Sea Station in List on the island of Sylt is the northernmost research center in Germany. Located within walking distance of the Wadden Sea, it offers the ideal point of departure for research at sea, in the intertidal zone, or in the station`s own laboratories.

45 persons work at the AWI`s facilities on Sylt: Scientists of the department Coastal Ecology and service staff members.

The station`s conference rooms are regularly used for scientific workshops and seminars. In addition, each year roughly 400 students visit the AWI on Sylt, taking part in one-week courses to deepen their understanding of the Wadden Sea ecosystem.

Emerged from a small field station for Oyster Research founded in 1924 the Wadden Sea Station Sylt can look back on a long history and proud research tradition as part of the Biologische Anstalt Helgoland. Just like the AWI`s Helgoland site, on Sylt ecological time series are recorded, and the resultant data are made available to government offices, professional associations, and research institutes.





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