Challenging convention and wisdom: a day in the life of a Meet the Algae guide
With visitors ranging from Stage 3 and GCSE pupils to teachers and retired professors, each engagement brought their distinct challenges. For young or old, "Have you eaten sushi?" was a good opener- most had! Then you could lead them into the word of bioenergy- either directly as photovoltaics, or indirectly via lipids and biomass. The more the technically-minded pushed for more specific detail on the mechanism of electron transfer, the more one frantically sought out the local BPV expert.
Another approach was to ask folk why the earth was green and not red or brown and discuss the fundamental need for chlorophyll and role of accessory pigments and the low-light requirements of phytoplankton as opposed to higher plants. Or, by telling each and everyone that "they are all a bunch of low life", go on to qualify this insult by saying that each and every one of us rely on early endosymbiotic events- whether to energise a night on the dance floor (mitochondria), or to provide the food to fuel it from chloroplasts!
Those endosymbiotic origins of algae and their promiscuous exchanges led to coccolithophorids (certainly sounds like Emiliana needs treatment for an affliction!), diatoms and dinoflagellates. Alternatively, pointing out that phytoplankton punch above their weight in sequestering carbon- a standing crop of only 3Gtonne sequester their own weight of carbon each year, whereas the more permanent populations of land plants also absorb one third of man's carbon emissions, but need much more forest canopy biomass to achieve it.
One good attention grabber was the big screen of ever squirming Euglena (well you could only occasionally see their flagella). They would slow to a halt and then fry before our eyes, before the next cohort was pipetted into the front line for their 5 minutes of fame. The younger contingent loved the quiz, some getting quite engaged into ever deeper levels of complexity, some knowing much (or quickly working it out), some knowing astonishingly little.
The sanctuary was the 4th floor coffee room where the afternoon cakes were astonishing- tasty, weighty and yet curiously reviving! Here one could watch waves of successive exhibition collapse like the Euglena, resting their aching limbs for 10 minutes prior to re-engaging with the masses. Or catch up on intermittent emails via iphone or flaky wifi and overhear
complaints, grumbles and stories of engagement or crowing over positive written feedback... would that there had been time enough for us to encourage folk to provide it!
The team retired after an exhausting afternoon to a pizza house adjacent to Charing Cross station, where our spirits were restored by beer and a genuine sense of team effort and a job well done- so cheers to Van, Xander, James and Katherine!