‘WADDEN SEA’ HIKE

Schillig / ‘Wadden Sea’ (Wattenmeer) 29.3.2017

We began our excursion with a walk from Schillig through the ‘Wadden Sea’. Our guide gave us a broad impression of the habitat (and UNESCO world natural heritage), which stretches out as far as 10 km from the shore. Our tour went all the way from sun-earth-flood-tide diagrams drawn into the sand to the more real and immediate experiences of crossing streams and being sucked up to the calves into the mud. Mainly, we learned about the different inhabitants of the mudflats: lobs, that digest the mud and can drop off their bottoms when in danger, the laver spire shells, which can glue mud to something similar to a surf board and can travel multiple hundreds of meters with that; “rubber band worms”, common cockles, which can bury and hide themselves into the mud; blue mussels, which produce sticky strings to attach themselves (to rocks, for example); shrimps, which turned out not to be pink at all until cooked; and, fortunately, some algae as well, even though Sylt or Helgoland are generally more promising places for that. We managed to find some brown algae and sea lettuce, the latter of which can be eaten (and we did), however usually it is imported from the Netherlands because of the very strict hygiene regulations in Germany.