Workshop: Aquatic capacity for algae near carbon emitting areas

Workshop introduction
Third-year VWO students from the Pius X College in Bladel were given a brief introduction to the concepts of symbiotic and mutualistic relationships between living things. Unfortunately, due to Covid-19 measures, we were not able to pair the students in groups. However, solution-oriented we classically asked the students for their input. The students had to come up with a mutualistic relationship through humankind and an organism.
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Freshwater algae near carbon-emitting areas
After a few minutes of brainstorming, the VWO-students identified a strong relationship with freshwater algae: ‘Mankind offers aquatic capacity for the algae. For example in the form of pools near high carbon-emitting areas such as airports.’ The algae captures carbon dioxide through the biological process of photosynthesis.
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Adverse developments
Are there potential adverse developments in this relationship? Did the students consider problems such as eutrophication? -the process where the body of water, in our case a pool, becomes nutrient-enriched or depleted through human interference, such as adding fertilizers. And lastly, what are the side effects of algae if they can exponentially grow undisturbed?
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Despite the fact that it was the first lecture of the day for the students -scheduled early morning at 09:10- our future citizens participated well.