WASCAL Floating University: Voices of an Ocean Community

Shownotes

Join us on a journey aboard POLARSTERN! 13 students from 12 West African countries are sailing from Cabo Verde to Bremerhaven as part of a unique training expedition. In this episode, Josefa speaks with three of them—Patience, Soulaymane, and Lamah—about their experiences living and working on the ship. The episode has been recorded directly on board!

We also hear from crew members, scientists, and fellow students about life at sea. What do they love most about the ocean? What’s it like to live on a research vessel? And what do they do to protect the ocean?

This expedition is part of the Master’s program in Climate Change and Marine Sciences in Cabo Verde, supported by WASCAL – the West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use.

A few links if you would like more information: Follow the POLARSTERN https://follow-polarstern.awi.de/#main-menu Blog Posts for updates on Oceanblogs https://www.oceanblogs.org/capeverde/ WASCAL Floating University (GEOMAR) https://www.geomar.de/en/discover/ocean-decade/floating-university GEOMAR (Instagram) https://www.instagram.com/geomarkiel/

Other Wellenbrecher-Episodes: Episode about the WASCAL Floating University Project with Björn Fiedler and Tobias Hahn https://wellenbrecherpodcast.podigee.io/8-folge

We submitted this episode to the Fast Forward Science 2025 competition to highlight the voices of a diverse group of early-career scientists (https://fastforwardscience.de/)!