Rotterdam Port field trip II w/ biologist Peter Paalvast

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For my STARTS4water residency on Biodiversity in the Rotterdam Port I am researching sessile organisms in the rotterdam port and the way they build their ecosystems, comparing the immense infrastructures we build in our harbours to the tiny habitats these life forms are creating.

Through researching topics like regeneration of marine life, cybernetic human/non-human communication as well as nature-inclusive engineering I’ve been in contact with many brilliant people over the last few weeks.

For my research, I went on a field trip with biologist Peter Paalvast, who has been advising the Port of Rotterdam about biodiversity for a long time. He showed me his experiments in the harbor and told me about his research about the shipworm, a species which is becoming more common because of cleaner waters. It eats the wood in the harbor area thus destroying the foundations a lot of the harbor area is standing on.

Pictures by Adriaan van de Polder.