Category: wave watching

In the featured image above, you see water shooting out from underneath the bridge; down from a slightly raised reservoir upstream, over the weir, towards the sea.

Feels like a very long time ago, but Kjersti, Hans-Christian and myself contributed two vignettes to the book “Teaching fieldwork in geography, earth and environmental sciences“, which has now become available!

Yesterday morning I went for my morning swim and then sat down at the beach afterwards and drank my coffee. I have been thinking a lot about the “turning the gaze” / “redirecting attention” part of the recent Biesta work that I read, it resonates with me so much!

The other day, I went on a one-day “writing retreat”. I generally work well from new spaces (I am writing this from Copenhagen central station as I am taking a break from “real” work and waiting for a connecting train) and especially moving spaces (so looking forward to being on the train for a couple […]

This practice of posting pictures only on my blog and not on Instagram is becoming really problematic when I am too busy to post every dip or dive the day it happens and, worse, there are several dips and/or dives happening every day! So here are some pictures from a dive in Limhamn to catch […]

I’m in my podcast phase again… And still on the Tea for Teaching show! Just listened to an older episode where Anna Logan and Ann Marie Farrell talk about pedagogy for large classes.

The study I am summarising here is a meta-analysis of 40 studies on how teacher characteristics influence secondary-school students, and they find that teacher characteristics and competencies explain 9% of the difference in student performance!

Climbing the steps out of the water after an ice dip lets me see the world from a different perspective. Instead of focussing on not slipping and on controlling my breath on the way down, on the way up I can linger, observe, and document. Building such small (or larger) moments into life and work, […]

I now finished reading Venet (2024)’s “Becoming an Everyday Changemaker: Healing and Justice in School” (where I understood that “the process is the point“, and where then helpful tools like “Vent diagrams” were introduced). Now, reading the third part of the book felt so empowering. The Talmud quote that I modified for this post’s title, […]

I think this might be the last repost from my Insta ever, since I have stopped posting there…

/weɪv wɒtʃɪŋ/ noun #WaveWatching is the practice of observing water or other fluids, and trying to explain any movement. #WaveWatching is great for several reasons: It is a powerful way of discovering disciplinary content in everyday contexts It can contribute to place-based learning (see for example #BergenWaveWatching) It can help build and strengthen identity as oceanographer […]

Recap of my wave watching Insta!

Enjoy my collected wave watching pics of the last two or so weeks, including the first Swedish Nationals in Depth Freediving in a long time! :-)

Some #WaveWatching pics from my Insta @fascinocean_kiel for our mental health…

Time for some wave watching!

Time for a little wave watching! Enjoy!

This is the 80th #WaveWatchingWednesday on this blog, recapping water pictures from my Insta @fascinocean_kiel! Funny how consistency accumulates stuff over time, imagine I was this consistent in other things that don’t include waves and water!

Yay water! <3

More waves, because water is AWESOME!

#WaveWatchingWednesday recapping a freediving weekend in Boalt, a work trip to Bergen and Voss with lots of dipping in both places, a freediving competition back home, and more dipping!

It’s #WaveWatchingWednesday, and this is actually my 75th post in this series, recapping my wave watching pics from my Insta @fascinocean_kiel! For all of you new readers on my blog — wave watching (and #KitchenOceanography) is actually how I really got into blogging and social media a long time ago; I was in the habit […]

Update from my #WaveWatching Insta. Enjoy!

Welcome to #WaveWatchingWednesday with updates from my Insta! A lot of ice dipping this year, it’s wonderful! :-)

Welcome to another #WaveWatchingWednesday!

Today’s #WaveWatchingWednesday with a recap of my recent trip to Norway. Enjoy!

Today’s #WaveWatchingWednesday is a recap of one of the most amazing experiences ever: A freediving trip to Dahab. Even though we have been back for more than a week now, I am still processing all the new impressions — the sea, the colors, the snorkling (and for those who need to hear it: no, looking […]

And it’s time again for a picture dump from my Instagram @fascinocean_kiel!

And it’s time again for a picture dump from my Instagram @fascinocean_kiel!

Lots of #WaveWatching pics! Enjoy! :)

#WaveWatchingWednesday means here comes a repost of all my recent Insta posts! Enjoy :)

For all of you who know and love my “24 days of #KitchenOceanography” series (and for those who need to quickly look up what that was about and then fall in love with it ;-)) — you can now buy it as a book! The book contains 24 easy experiments, embedded in the bigger context […]

Here is a recap of the last month or so of my #WaveWatching pics on Insta. Enjoy!

Wow, I am so bad at posting wave watching pics recently… Here is everything that happened on my wave watching Instagram @fascinocean_kiel in the last 10 weeks! Enjoy!

I haven’t done a #WaveWatchingWednesday in 7 weeks — time flies when you are having fun! So here are the last 7 weeks of water Instagram pics from @fascinocean_kiel. Enjoy!

In the “static apnea” discipline in freediving, many cool pictures of athletes are taken underwater in a way that plays with the reflection of the athlete in the still water surface. This can lead to pretty spooky pictures (like the one of Victor in the top left). We do have other experiences with water, where […]

Shockingly little #WaveWatching currently happening on my Insta @fascinocean_kiel (maybe I also need to reconsider the name at some point?), but here are the latest pictures!

This is a round-up of all my wave watching pics of the last three months of 2022. Clearly I have been busy in real life if I am that far behind sharing stuff online! Anyway, here they are. Enjoy!

Welcome to another #WaveWatchingWednesday!

Welcome to another #WaveWatchingWednesday!

Welcome to my wave watching week! :)

Here is a whole summer worth of #WaveWatching pics from my Insta @fascinocean_kiel. With a bit of meta commentary around it, because there are SO many pictures. Enjoy!

That’s a great question, Sophia! And one that is really difficult to answer. But I’ll try!

Welcome and enjoy all of last week’s #WaveWatching pics!

It’s time for another #WaveWatchingWednesday, where I share all my #WaveWatching pics from my Instagram @fascinocean_kiel! Enjoy!

Happy #WaveWatchingWednesday with a repost of all of the last two week’s worth of pics that I posted on my #WaveWatching insta @fascinocean_kiel.

Welcome to this #WaveWatchingWednesday, where I share pictures from my Instagram @fascinocean_kiel!

Welcome to this #WaveWatchingWednesday: Lots of wave pics last week on my Insta @fascinocean_kiel!

Welcome to #WaveWatchingWednesday, my series in which I share my daily #WaveWatching pics from my Instagram @fascinocean_kiel to this blog!

After spending a good chunk of yesterday afternoon transferring #WaveWatching pictures from my Instagram into a blog post here, and wondering why I did not bother to write better captions for all the cool pics I’ve posted, I thought I’d go back to my roots and start with, at and for my blog. And if […]

I know, it’s not even Wednesday today, but I have to get all the pictures out that have accumulated since the last #WaveWatchingWednesday post on January 19th! Because these days, I go swimming in the sea every day so pictures are accumulating over on Instagram fast! Since I’m sharing over four months in one post, […]

Chris Bore is one of the most loyal readers of my blog and has been for a long time, and now he wrote a beautiful post about #WaveWatching over on his own blog, and gave me permission to repost here. Thank you for loving #WaveWatching as much as I do, Chris! A few years back […]

Wow, catching up on wave watching pics from November until now…

I just realised that the last time I posted #WaveWatching pics from my Insta @fascinocean_kiel was today a month ago, so I couldn’t wait until Wednesday… Please enjoy pics from Bergen, the cabin, the train to Oslo and back with a brilliant weekend in Voss, and the ride home to Kiel!

Welcome to another #WaveWatchingWednesday, where I post all of last week’s #WaveWatching pics from my Insta!

Last week’s pics from my #WaveWatching Insta — enjoy! :)

A collection of #WaveWatching pics. Enjoy! :)

Waaaaater! Enjoy! :)

I’ve been posting over on my #WaveWatching Instagram @fascinocean_kiel and finally got around to copy&pasting all the pics over here. Enjoy catching up on what I’ve been up to!

So I took the ferry from Kiel to Oslo and obviously had to document (most of) the water I saw :-) And now I’m exhausted. Let’s see how much water I’m going to see tomorrow! :)

Have a nice #WaveWatchingWednesday! :)

Super excited to share a guest post today: Felipe is writing about his recent #WaveWatching article on “Evaluating shallow water waves by observing Mach cones on the beach”. I came across this article and was going to write a summary, but how much cooler is it to hear from Felipe himself? Thank you for being here! […]

Each #WaveWatchingWednesday I’m surprised by how many #WaveWatching pics I manage to take & post to my Insta in a normal work week!

Another week of my #WaveWatching Insta @fascinocean_kiel!

All of the last two week’s #WaveWatching Insta pics in one place, for your viewing pleasure! :)

Check out this week’s #WaveWatching pics from my Insta @fascinocean_kiel!

Here is a collection of #WaveWatching pics from my Insta @fascinocean_kiel! Enjoy!

Remember I made this little wave watching foldy thingy a while back? The one you see in the lower right corner of the picture above? How cool is it that it ended up in the GEO Saison magazine? You can download the German version here (and check out some guidance on wave watching in German while […]

A week’s worth of wave pics from my Instagram @fascinocean_kiel. Enjoy!  

Here are some recent #WaveWatching pics from my Instagram @fascinocean_kiel. Enjoy! :)

I’ve been fascinated by gooselings recently, mainly because they are super cute. But I can tell you about what makes wave watching special when the waves are made by geese — it is an extra challenging type of wave watching! (Check out this post for a more general — and likely much more useful — […]

I was reading an article on “active learning” by Lombardi et al. (2021), when the sentence “In undergraduate geoscience, Pugh et al. (2019) found that students who made observations of the world and recognized how they might be explained by concepts from their classes were more likely to stay in their major than those who […]

For my dear friends, who are worrying because I didn’t post any #WaveWatching pics recently: I’m still here, and I’m still wave watching! :) For example on my lunch time walk with F today: Isn’t this a beautiful pic of how waves build up over both time and distance if the wind is blowing continuously? […]

iEarth is currently establishing the new-to-me format of “teaching conversations”, where two or more people meet to discuss specific aspects of one person’s teaching in a “critical friend” setting. Obviously I volunteered to be grilled, and despite me trying to suggest other topics, too (like the active lunch break and the “nerd topic” intro in a […]

I set up a german page with a very simple intro to wave watching and thought I’d repost the images below. The reason for that new page is super exciting: Another article about me & wave watching will come out in print soon, and they will refer to a german version of my wave watching […]

They are just too adorable for words! And a heron photobombing :)

You might remember this edge here and the reflection situation. More details in this recent post, but in a nutshell: The wave crests marked in red are approaching the beach and wooden edge, and where they hit the wooden edge, they get reflected and converted into the green wave crests which propagate away from the […]

At the moment, I am doing almost daily trips to check up on the baby geese because they are just sooo cute! And growing up so quickly! Their waves are getting a lot better, too. There are two families, one with four and one with three babies. Looks like they are all sitting on an […]

When I look at the picture above, I see basically three different zones on the surface of the lake. The yellow zone, which is under the direct influence of the wind, where the water is full of small waves, and then two other zones. In the red zone, the water isn’t under direct influence of […]

Sometimes it’s not the prettiest wave watching pics that we can think about the most. Here, I really like how the petals that blew from the trees surrounding the lake accumulated in this spot, and how they accumulated in different bands. Do the broader white bands show strong wind events when many petals were blown […]

So you thought exciting wave watching can only happen near the ocean? That is so not true! Last weekend, for example, I spotted the round foam patch just downstream of that little weir. Further downstream, the foam acted kinda like a flow tracer, but what was going on with that round patch? Turns out it’s […]

A wave watching book for beginners and those who appreciate the art and science of wave watching! Now available to order here or via any book store or online dealer that can find books using their ISBN :-) I wrote this book such a long time ago (read about the process here and follow the linked […]

These baby geese made me so happy on my run this morning! Even though they have to learn to swim a little faster and less messy for a nice wake to form, they were just so super cute!

I didn’t post one of these since Februray, so it’s about time! These are all my #WaveWatching Insta posts since then!

Haven’t posted a #WaveWatchingWednesday in a while — but I am very regularly posting over on my Instagram @fascinocean_kiel. Check it out if you fancy a more regular supply of pics!

When students have only one day at sea, it’s important to prepare them well for what will happen there so they get the chance to make the most of the experience. For example, let’s consider a one day student cruises just outside of Bergen. Students are divided in teams that use different types of instrumentation and […]

Here are the most recent #WaveWatching posts I posted on my Instagram @fascinocean_kiel. Enjoy!

One of the few “behind the scenes” shots of me taking #WaveWatching pictures! See the super awesome current right at my feet? :-D⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Similar to kitchen oceanography, I believe that wave watching is a great tool in education and outreach, especially during times where activites have to be socially distant. My article “How to […]

Last #WaveWatchingWednesday of 2020 — this year’s final compilation of my Instagtam posts! Today with a lot of non-wave watching pics. But who doesn’t love some #KitchenOceanography?

Welcome to #WaveWatchingWednesday! Here are some recent wave watching pics. Enjoy!

(Download in English || Download in Spanish; thanks to Felipe Veloso for translating!) How about a little wave watching game to celebrate #WaveWatchingWednesday? The minute I saw Andrea Lopez Lang’s tweet, where she made a “fortune teller” (no idea that’s what they were called) as going-away and please-remember-what-you-learned gift for her class, I HAD to […]

The new particle tracking app “Flow on the Go” became available for testing on iOS yesterday. And it is SO AWESOME!!! The idea is that particle that are advected in a flow can be used to visualize a flow field (similar to what we did when we were at the 13-m-diameter rotating swimming pool in […]

For #WaveWatchingWednesday, please enjoy a collection of water pics from my #WaveWatching Insta @fascinocean_kiel!

Even though I haven’t done a #WaveWatchingWednesday in a looong time, there has of course been a lot of wave watching going on. But the longer I wait with copying all the Instagram posts into a blog post, the more work it gets, the longer I put it off. Vicious circle! But here we go […]

It’s Wednesday, and that means it’s time for a recap of my #WaveWatching Instagram! Check out nice pictures & some explanations behind the cut!

It’s #WaveWatchingWednesday, and that means that you get all of last weeks wave watching Instagram posts compiled into one blog post. Enjoy!

This is a (admittedly terribly crowded — but I only had 1 A4 page and there are so many interesting #BergenWaveWatching stories to tell!) poster that I am presenting on behalf of myself, Kjersti Daae and Elin Darelius at the #FieldWorkFix conference next Tuesday (September 8, 2020). If you would rather listen to my poster’s […]

Another week’s worth of #wavewatching Instagram posts all in one place for your viewing pleasure! :-)

Welcome to another #WaveWatchingWednesday — all my wave watching Instagram pictures in one place! Read all about it (and look at a lot of pretty pictures!) below the cut.

I haven’t posted a #WaveWatchingWednesday in quite some time, so behind the cut there are a lot of pretty pictures for you! Enjoy!

Today’s guest post is brought to you by Manel Camacho. Manel and I met on Twitter and bonded over our joint love of wave watching — me as a dedicated amateur, Manel as PhD student in marine energy. Today, Manel is giving us a glimpse into what marine energy is all about. Enjoy! :-) — […]

A week’s worth of #WaveWatching pictures for you. Enjoy! Starting off strong: I love living in Kiel! Totally different vibe the next morning, looking very winter-y somehow. And then another early morning on my way to the beach. Below you see the locks on Kiel canal from the bridge that crosses the channel. I really […]

Here are lots of wave watching post from my Instagram @fascinocean_kiel.de. Enjoy! More below the cut…

Woke up at 4:11 this morning and was AWAKE. So the obvious thing to do is catch the sunrise from the bridge across Kiel canal! And I was lucky that there was quite a lot going on in the locks already, too! Look at this beautiful wake! Early morning wave watching is really the best […]

Had a really early start yesterday (today again, but those pics will come in a separate post :-)) because I wanted to cycle to the beach to prepare a guided wave watching tour that I’ll be running for Ocean Summit later this year. Quick detour on the way — I never realized what a cool spot […]

Another week’s worth of wave watching posts on my Insta @fascinocean_kiel! See it all below the cut.

Ooops, long time no see! But even though I haven’t posted a #WaveWatchingWednesday on my blog in a while, I’ve still been active over on Instagram. These are the last pictures I took on a beach walk before going to visit my family (sadly far away from the sea ;-)) After being away from Kiel […]

So I don’t know if this is a good idea that anyone would actually want to play with. But when I was visiting my sister last week, she was working on designing a memory game for kids, and it looked so much fun that I made one of my own, and then also made it […]

About a week ago, I went on a lovely walk with my parents, and here are the pictures. How I love the beach! As I am looking more at ripples in the sand, I am seeing them everywhere now. Below, we are looking at a little area on the beach (the water would be just […]

I’m getting more and more fascinated with wave ripples. I kinda understand how they form, but not enough to be able to explain as much about them as I would like to. For example below: Why is the pattern so different where sand has been washed on top of the shallow stones? Yes, the water […]

After, at that point, more than two week of self-isolation in my flat with only my early morning walks away from the flat, and only runs with my friend J. in human company that wasn’t virtual, my parents came to see me the day after my Birthday (which was already a while ago, I’ve been […]

So you might have seen my novel on the formation of sand ripples last week, and the tl;dr: I have a vague idea of how sand ripples form, but it’s not as clear to me as I would like. But imagine my delight when, after two days of foam stripes like this one… …there was […]

More beautiful #WaveWatching pictures! Enjoy … below the cut! :-)

Several of my friends were planning on teaching with DIYnamics rotating tables right now. Unfortunately, that’s currently impossible. Fortunately, though, I have one at home and enjoy playing with it enough that I’m Playing with it Making videos of me playing with it Putting the videos on the internet Going to do video calls with my […]

My long time Twitter friend Anne shared these beautiful pictures and I absolutely had to do a #friendlywaves post where I explain other people’s wave pictures. Take a moment to admire the beautiful picture below. Wouldn’t you love to be there? I certainly would! What can we learn from this picture? First — it’s a windy […]

My perfect Saturdays start like this: Early morning walk along the water, followed by coffee while blogging about waves. Today’s focus: The cool waves that birds make! First, let’s look at the weird way in which seagulls take off from water. They make a big splash which develops into ring-shaped waves. So far, so good. […]

It has been bugging me for a while that on days where there isn’t a lot going on in terms of regular wave watching, I often see ripples in the sand and don’t understand what’s determining their wavelength, their shape, everything about them. So what better use of a quarantine weekend than to browse old […]

Here is a picture dump of pretty pictures for you! All this happened over the last week over on @fascinocean_kiel!                                          

A #friendlywaves post: you send me the pictures, I talk about physics! Today: My friend A sent me these lovely pictures from Lofoten, knowing I love wave watching. And there is so much to see! Let’s begin with the picture above, where we are looking out over the stern of a ship towards a bridge. There […]

It seems insane that back in January I voluntarily spent time at the “Boot”, a water sports trade show in Düsseldorf with over 250.000 visitors. I was there doing ocean scicomm (check out my Instagram for more information on that), but one of my highlights was definitely THE WAVE. The wave is an artificial standing wave […]

I didn’t post a #WaveWatchingWednesday last week because even though I had tons of pretty Instagram posts, most of them didn’t have any explanations going with them. But since this week was all about pretty pictures and no texts again, I’ll just give you a picture dump here (below the cut). Enjoy! :-)

So yesterday this happened: When I was on my way to meet my friend for a run early in the morning, the whole pavement was flooded (look at the cute little hydraulic jumps!). After calling the authorities (and judging from the telephone operator’s voice, I wasn’t the first one! But then how should I know […]

A reader of my blog, Rocío*, sent me this beautiful image from Arnao beach (Castrillón- Asturias-Spain), and I asked if I could use it in a #friendlywaves post. He agreed, so here we go! First, let’s check out the original image in all its beauty, before I start scribbling on it. What features of the waves […]

Reposting all of last week’s posts from my #WaveWatching Instagram @fascinocean_kiel. Enjoy! Lovely morning with wave watching and all the trees in full bloom. Hope you have a nice day! :) This very climate-stripe-y looking morning is a great example for different surface roughnesses reflecting different parts of the sky towards us, thus showing up […]

Here are all of last week’s #WaveWatching Instagram posts for you! If you would like daily wave watching pics rather than weekly digests, follow my Instagram @fascinocean_kiel! #wakewatching in a beautiful sunrise. How much better does it get? Love the delicate feathery structure of the wavelets, forming the V-shaped wake with the birds at their […]

Today’s guest blogger Jeannette and I “met” on Twitter when she reposted one of my 24 Days of #KitchenOceanography posts, saying “A friend just forwarded me a #kitchenoceanography experiment that pretty much sums up my MSc work minus all the math.”. So I — obviously — asked her to write a guest post, and here we […]

Welcome to another #WaveWatchingWednesday post, where you get all of last week’s wave watching pics from my Instagram @fascinocean_kiel in one go! Let’s get started: Fascinating how different parts of the water look so different. Some dark because areas are more rough because there are wind-generated ripples and waves there. Other areas are brighter because […]

I didn’t write a #WaveWatchingWednesday post last week. I think when my last blogpost ended with the Oslo ferry leaving Kiel for the last time in the forseeable future, it really hit me how far away so many of the people I love are, indefinitely out of reach. I had a couple really tough days […]

Here is last week’s summary of my #WaveWatching Instagram @fascinocean_kiel. Social distancing in Kiel isn’t so bad… At least until I started to take it seriously enough to stay inside full time, so this week we only have pictures until last Saturday. And there will probably be no wave watching in the near future. But […]

Recap of last week’s posts on my #WaveWatching Instagram @fascinocean_kiel! Starting off with two newts, because sometimes I actually look at stuff in the water, not just the waves on top ;-) As much as I love being in Hamburg, especially with my job taking me to the heart of the city, it always just […]

Here’s another #WaveWatchingWednesday overview over my Instagram @fascinocean_kiel! Enjoy! Sun glint can be so helpful to make waves visible more clearly, like this morning. I love the combination of the turbulent wake, the feathery usually V-shaped (and in this case quite wonky) wake, the sun. Always fun to watch! Just moments later and the feathery […]

Welcome to the recap of my #WaveWatching Instagram @fascinocean_kiel! Starting off strong: My standard #KitchenOceanography overturning circulation experiment (recognize the tank & the cool pad?) put into a very different light by @davidcarrenohansenfor the upcoming issue of @sciencenotes5x15! Can’t wait to see how the pictures turn out — definitely not the “snap a pic with […]

Another week, another #WaveWatchingWednesday! Here are my collected Instagram posts from my wave watching Insta @fascinocean_kiel. Even quick glimpses of water make me happy: #WaveWatching from the train! And even from the train, we see gusts of wind as darker, rougher patches of the water. This is what a storm flood looks like at low […]

Another recap of a week on my wave watching Instagram @fascinocean_kiel. Enjoy! Best thing for my mental health: Running along the waterfront. Bonus if it includes wave watching as it does today: See how in the reflections of the lights there are zones where the water is almost mirror-like (those are the sad zones: no […]

Here is another #WaveWatchingWednesday with last week’s recap of my wave watching Insta @fascinocean_kiel! Enjoy! Opening my mom’s fridge, I went „WHAT IS THAT SUPER AWESOME LAYERED SAUCE???“. Turns out this was accidental #KitchenOceanography. The sauce was blended when it went into the fridge, then separated and formed layers. Density stratification! Unfortunately I have to […]

Reposting from Elin’s blog here! — Kjersti, Steffi, Elin and myself (Mirjam) recently discussed ways to better integrate the GEOF105 student cruise into the course. My suggestion was to ask the students to observe things throughout the whole duration of the course, and then have them relate their time series with what they observe when […]

Another summary post of my wave watching Insta @fascinocean_kiel! Enjoy! What is going on in the picture below? Just from looking at the picture I could only guess, but luckily I took dozens of pictures of that location with slightly different angles and at different times, so I could figure it out! To the right […]

For #WaveWatchingWednesday: A collection of pictures that I took (and shared on my wave watching Insta @fascinocean_kiel over the last week. For some reason with a lot more commentary on here than on Insta itself, don’t know why. Maybe because I am writing this while it’s still dark outside and I am waiting for it to […]

Reposting from Elin’s blog: Kjersti, Steffi, Elin and myself (Mirjam) recently discussed ways to better integrate the GEOF105 student cruise into the course. My suggestion was to ask the students to observe things throughout the whole duration of the course, and then have them relate their time series with what they observe when “at sea”. […]

Yay! Another recap of my wave watching Insta! The year started off in the very best company — watching ships and waves and flowers with Astrid! But of course there is also actual wave watching happening: Here we see a ship’s wake arriving. I find it fascinating how there are the stripes where you can […]

Reposted from Elin’s blog: Kjersti, Steffi, Elin and myself (Mirjam) recently discussed ways to better integrate the GEOF105 student cruise into the course. My suggestion was to ask the students to observe things throughout the whole duration of the course, and then have them relate their time series with what they observe when “at sea”. […]

Reposting from Elin’s blog: Kjersti, Steffi, Elin and myself (Mirjam) recently discussed ways to better integrate the GEOF105 student cruise into the course. My suggestion was to ask the students to observe things throughout the whole duration of the course, and then have them relate their time series with what they observe when “at sea”. […]

Reposted from Elin’s blog: Kjersti, Steffi, Elin and myself (Mirjam) recently discussed ways to better integrate the GEOF105 student cruise into the course. My suggestion was to ask the students to observe things throughout the whole duration of the course, and then have them relate their time series with what they observe when “at sea”. […]

There was a lot of wave watching going on on my Insta @fascinocean_kiel this last December! Partly because I had decided that I wanted my feed to consist of both my 24 days of kitchen oceanography advent calendar and my usual wave watching content. And once I had started the pattern, I wasn’t going to break it… […]

Reposted from Elin’s blog: Kjersti, Steffi, Elin and myself (Mirjam) recently discussed ways to better integrate the GEOF105 student cruise into the course. My suggestion was to ask the students to observe things throughout the whole duration of the course, and then have them relate their time series with what they observe when “at sea”. […]

Reposted from Elin’s blog: Kjersti, Steffi, Elin and myself (Mirjam) recently discussed ways to better integrate the GEOF105 student cruise into the course. My suggestion was to ask the students to observe things throughout the whole duration of the course, and then have them relate their time series with what they observe when “at sea”. […]

Reposted from Elin’s blog: Kjersti, Steffi, Elin and myself (Mirjam) recently discussed ways to better integrate the GEOF105 student cruise into the course. My suggestion was to ask the students to observe things throughout the whole duration of the course, and then have them relate their time series with what they observe when “at sea”. […]

Reposted from Elin’s blog: Kjersti, Steffi, Elin and myself (Mirjam) recently discussed ways to better integrate the GEOF105 student cruise into the course. My suggestion was to ask the students to observe things throughout the whole duration of the course, and then have them relate their time series with what they observe when “at sea”. […]

My scicomm Instagram @fascinocean_kiel is back! As in it’s something that I am putting more thought into again. While it started off strong almost two years ago with daily posts written specifically for Instagram, I’ve been in a bit of a slump. For a while, I just posted pictures from current blog posts with a […]

So today I spent a perfect day at the beach in Schilksee, at the mouth of Kiel Bight. Not a lot of wind (you see the gusts of wind further offshore) but perfect wave watching nevertheless. Look at this beautiful wake! Here I wanted to take another picture of a wake, but the seagull had […]

When I was on my way down to Kiel fjord earlier this day I was in a bit of a weird mood. I was thinking about how the weather was grey and gloomy. And how that meant that there wouldn’t even be a nice sun raise to take pictures of. And how I might already […]

I love how below you see the sharp edges of where the bridge’s shadow makes it possible to look into the water, when it is impossible to see anything where the sky is being reflected. But you see the equally sharp edge of the reflection of the mountains on the other side where you can’t […]

The geometric shape of Lille Lungegårdsvannet makes for perfect wave watching conditions. Not only when wanting to look at waves from all sides, but also when you are just fascinated by reflections and geometric wave pattern. And also by rainbows. Am I the only one who, when the sun is out and at a good […]

You might remember earlier posts on a wave power plant I love to visit in Øygården, where it almost always looks like in the movie below (That movie is part of this blog post, but I also have a blog post on the wave power plant where waves used to drive a turbine or the one […]

When Tor came to visit me in GFI’s basement lab a couple of days ago, he told me about an experiment he had seen in Gothenburg in the seventies. So Elin and I obviously had to recreate it on the spot. Therefore today, we are comparing phase- and group velocities in deep and shallow water! […]

My friend Pierre, who I went to Saltstraumen with in 2012, wrote me a text about a year ago and asked me to remind him to tell me about 51 next time we met. We met and, as we do, geeked out about some hydrodynamics stuff. And he told me about 51. It turns out […]

When I wrote the blog post on “wave watching in a bucket” a couple of days ago, it strongly reminded me of a movie I had filmed already back in March 2018. I was sitting on a train, still inside the train station, and noticed the pattern in my mug (also I just had gotten my […]

What I find really fascinating about the planetary Rossby wave experiment is to look from the side and see the columns develop and move around the tank. Here is a side-view camera plus the top view, both cameras rotating with the tank. The movie is sped up 20x so in about 22 seconds, you will have […]

On the GEOF105 student cruise that I was lucky enough to join like I did last year, I happened to observe what you see in the picture above: Standing waves in a bucket! And this isn’t a staged photo, this is me taking a picture of a student at work. We are looking at the […]

And now we have arrived in the part of Norway that, to me, feels like home rather than “oh wow, impressive landscape”. Even though the landscape is still impressive! But also very familiar now. And very beautiful! Especially with these low clouds randomly hanging out above the fjords. And are you going to be disappointed […]

I love the little meandering river in the picture above! We are now approaching the west coast of Norway and all prejudices when it comes to weather over there are being confirmed. It’s grey and overcast. Still, there is a lot of cool water watching to be done on this train ride! I think it […]

And now we’ve reached the heights where there is fresh snow! And also where there are wild rivers. Don’t know which I find more exciting :-) Ok, yeah, it’s definitely the rivers that I find more exciting. Also, isn’t it funny that at first glance, the river seems to be flowing left-to-right, because that’s the […]

While I was on the train from Oslo to Bergen for almost 7 hours, I sent a lot of pictures to my friend Kristin who had expressed an interest in virtually joining the trip. And it is a very pretty trip indeed! Also really interesting wave watching, do you notice the white caps on the […]

And here we are — at my favourite museum, the Fram museum! And I think I have in previous posts said all I can possibly say about the waves you see in this picture. But they are very beautiful nevertheless :-) As soon as the ferry had arrived in Oslo, I ran off and across […]

And here we are again, driving past the next interesting structure. Above, you see our feathery wake (telling you that we are driving left-to-right past that bay). And below, I am turning backwards to still see the bay, therefore you now get a glimpse of our turbulent wake, too. Also you see where the waves […]

Yes. Sometimes I kneel in front of puddles. And I think it was worth it!

In the picture above, you see the waves that constitute our feathery wake *almost* reaching the little island (we are driving towards the lower right corner of the picture). And now, they are here! See how they lap against the rocks? Below you also see parts of the wake as they are reflected by the […]

After all this wake watching, you probably noticed that the ferry I am on has a large wake. So it was fun to see how other boats changed their course as soon as we were close: Heading straight into the wake! I would rather head straight into it than being hit by it from the […]

Now we have reached Oslofjorden. Look at our beautiful wake! Since the water is calm inside the fjord, we now also see another interesting feature of the wake: The waves that connect the “feathers” of the V. Looks a bit as if we had been going over speed bumps for as far as we can […]

Remember how the morning was beautiful but windy? As I got up and saw how the sea spray was flying, I remembered having woken up during the night, noticing the ship move. Since it’s quite a large ship I remember being a little surprised, but falling asleep quickly again since I really love sleeping on […]

The sun lights objects on Earth from the exact same direction as it lights the moon (see a thought experiment on that here). So far so not surprising, at least in theory. In practice, I still find it kinda amazing every time I notice. Like this weekend, when I was “fishing” with two kids, 3 […]

The next morning, even though I didn’t set an alarm and had an inside cabin, I woke up and got up exactly on time for this: But check out how the wave crests get blown away, and how there is sea spray flying everywhere. It’s still quite windy! Even though the sea looks this beautiful! […]

Still the same evening as in the three previous posts, still windy, but now also getting overcast again. Still love our wake! And fun bonus in the sea full of white caps: This really cool pirate ship (or whatever it is supposed to be). Looked a bit like the Black Pearl in this weather… Unfortunately […]

Just as quickly as it had gotten dark, the sun came out again. Love how the left side of the picture below looks like the colors are inverse with the dark sky and bright sea! Below, we are looking at our own wake again, and at how the waves are breaking. I could watch this […]

Yesterday, I went for a quick walk up Fløyen and really enjoyed it, despite the view being slightly different from what is usually shown on the postcards. Nice, some wake watching! I like walking through a forest and then occasionally getting glimpses of the city and the fjord! Although the glimpses became less and less […]

The weather forecast wasn’t too good for the crossing, so knowing that I was going to do some hard core wave watching anyway, I put on my full rain gear right away. After all, there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing! If you look at the clouds, you see that the […]

Oh look, someone built a perfect rectangular wave watching basin into Bergen harbour! As you see above, waves are propagating towards this little wave tank and into it. They then get reflected at the edge at the bottom of the picture. Then, the original incoming wave and reflection propagate together further into the basin. They […]

Since it’s raining today (finally! I can’t be distracted by good weather all the time!) it’s time to post some Bergen pics! And yes, Kristin, they are all water-related. Sorry not sorry! I don’t know how many of these I’ve taken over the years, but I still like this view! And apparently I am really […]

Sailing out of the Kiel fjord on a large ferry changes the whole perspective on the coastline. For example below, we see the lighthouse Friedrichsort which is located at the end of a headland and which is always an interesting spot for wave watching. Or on the other side of Kiel fjord, Laboe is very […]

I recently traveled from Kiel to Bergen by ferry and train, and instead of doing one single monster post about it, I thought I’d try a mini series format. Let me know how that works out for you (but it’s scheduled for the next two weeks already anyway, so you’ll have to live with it […]

They might not look like much, but when I spotted these in the street this morning, I was super excited: Roll waves! I marked some of them below (just to make sure you see what I saw and not just a wet street) — lots of little groups of waves that fan out and propagate […]

For both of my tank experiment projects, in Bergen and in Kiel, we want to develop a Rossby wave demonstration. So here are my notes on three setups we are considering, but before actually having tried any of the experiments. Background on Rossby waves I recently showed that rotating fluids behave fundamentally differently from non-rotating […]

We are still in the “interesting weather” period here in Kiel. Feels more like April than like September, but I am not complaining. I love the rapid change between dark clouds and blue skies and sunshine! Also I like how much more interesting wave pattern get if the wind comes in gusts rather than blowing […]

Minutes after drawing the illustration to the “you are not a drop in the ocean, you are the ocean in a drop” quote I shared yesterday in the most beautiful sunshine, the sky started looking like this. Luckily I had a nice spot from which I could observe what happened next… …lots of drops. In […]

Even though I’ve been looking at waves for years now, wave watching is still full of surprises. Yesterday I showed you capillary waves that a jellyfish made, and today I’m showing you a helpful seagull. What I found most fascinating walking through this marina were the long straight wave crests that form in parallel to […]

Sometimes the best wave watching doesn’t happen how you expect it to happen. Look at this jellyfish, bobbing about in the surface of Kiel fjord. Can you spot the circular wave pattern all around where it breaks the surface? I find this so amazing. Would you have thought that you would spot waves that a […]

Early morning Kiel fjord — today even featuring a hot-air balloon! But, more interestingly, the wake of this police boat. I find it already pretty cool in the picture below: The fjord is calm and mirror-like, but inside the ship’s V-shaped wake the surface changes completely and the reflections look totally different (now only reflecting […]

When I go wave watching back home in Kiel, I tend to be drawn to other places than this particular one, but sometimes you find gold in the places you least expect it. And then, what is usually a really nice and easy to explain kind of wave — shallow water waves — acts up […]

The picture above I thought was too pretty to not put on my blog (because my blog’s main function to me is still my personal brain dump), but the picture below is actually interesting from a physics point of view. In the middle of the lake, the surface looks a lot rougher and crumpled than […]

I’m super excited to be back in Ratzeburg, but before I start on all the new pictures I will be taking over the next couple of days, let’s get some old pictures out of the pipeline, all taken either in the morning when the lake is still calm, or in the evening, when it’s calm […]

When I decided that I was going to stop under a tree for a while to let the shower of rain pass before heading home, the weather looked like this. Not even half a minute later, I was very happy I had stopped! Because the wave watching got a lot better as the wind drove […]

My not-so-new-anymore job, GEO-Tag der Natur,’s goal is to help people see nature around us through different eyes. In order to enrich people’s lives, but also in order to encourage and empower people to protect nature, for which a necessary first step is to start noticing everything that is there and worth protecting. We do […]

These very long and regular wave crests were caused by a ship — they are one side of the V of a ship’s wake that’s about to reach the sea wall here. I love how well defined the wave crests are — on one side you see the reflection of the bollards and the bright […]

The first wave watching during our vacation in the Lake District (which I am only writing about now because I had to post about the amazing stuff at the coast first, like the Arnside tidal bore or general wave watching in Arnside) happened on the drive to our first hike when we had to stop because […]

I hope you saw my post on the Arnside tidal bore and are well aware of the awesome tides in Morecombe Bay (if not, check it out here!), so here is a little more about them. This is what the bay looked like at the beginning of our picknick. 40 minutes later, see how there […]

The waves that ducks (or ships, or anything else moving through water) make are called “wakes”. And wake watching is so much fun! A wake is pretty much the Mach cone in 2D — waves from the duck can’t propagate faster than the leading edge of the wake. When a wake passes by, that’s the […]

We saw Piel Island with a very cool castle ruin across the bay when visiting the South Walney Nature Reserve the other day,  and were intrigued by it. Depending on the tides, you can drive over by car, walk, or take a ferry, which is what we did. Arriving at the spot where the ferry […]

Does that warning sign above (that I showed as a teaser in yesterday’s post on wave watching in and around Arnside) make you as curious as it made me? Usually, water rises for approximately 6 hours until high tide is reached, and then falls again for another approximately 6 hours until low tide is reached. […]

Arnside is a beautiful little town on the banks of the river Kent, and Astrid and I went on a nice hike along the shores of the estuary a little while ago. The difference between high water and low water is quite impressive here, and we started our hike right after high tide to make […]

This picture might look fake, but it’s not. But what about it does scream “fake!”? To me, there are several things: the almost perfect sinusoidal shape of the waves the way how wavelengths and amplitudes decrease with distance the almost complete lack of other waves except for the one dominant field the way we can look […]

Looking at the picture above, taken in the South Walney Island Nature Reserve on our walk yesterday, what is the first thing you notice? For me, it is not the cute little hide which is a perfect spot for seal and bird watching, for me it is — obviously! — what is going on with […]

Astrid, #wavewatching supporter from Day 1, sent me these pictures for a #friendlywaves post. Today, I want to start with a spoiler picture (or, rather, I did start with a spoiler picture already — see above) that shows you the setting at low tide to help us explain the wave pattern that we then observe […]

Anyone who might be new to my blog because of yesterday’s presentation at #SiPManc — please don’t be scared and run away, this is the most complicated #friendlywaves I have ever gotten, usually things are A LOT easier! :-) I love #friendlywaves! Victor sent me the picture above. He took it in 2017 in Tampa, […]

Did you miss my talk at the Science in Public conference in Manchester? Well, you are in luck — here it is! Three years ago, I visited my sister and her then four month old daughter. We spent an evening on the shores of the german river “Schlei”, close to their home. It was a beautiful […]

I’m in Manchester for Science in Public 2019 and I couldn’t help myself, I had to do some wave watching. To be fair, though: These pictures really don’t do Manchester justice as a city. It is such an amazing city! Last time I was here, I spent a whole day exploring four historical libraries that were […]

My friend Alice is currently in Berlin, and as one does when visiting Germany’s capital city: She’s wave watching! I can only say: I approve! That’s what I always do there, too (exhibit 1, exhibit 2). And knowing that I always like the challenge, she sent me a #friendlywaves picture. Meaning a picture of waves […]

I’ve been on my fair share of ships over the years, but even though I enjoy my month or two at sea every year, I cannot even begin to express the respect I have for seafarers who spend all their working life at sea. Being away from home for at least half the year, living […]

This is the story of a pilot ship, merrily sailing along on a beautiful day, making waves. Since it’s windy and Kiel fjord is a little choppy, the waves break and both side of the V-shaped wake with the pilot ship at its tip are visible. See the foam of the breaking waves? And in […]

Surprise! I did some wave watching yesterday! Ok, let’s start with something simple to warm you up: A duck’s wake. And wind waves (coming in from the top right) hitting a patch of moss on the side of this little pier, and then radiating away as half circles. Here is a movie of that because […]

What do you do the night before the most important three days of your whole work year? Yep — some wave watching with friends! On Thursday night, we went to cool down and relax after preparing for GEO-Tag der Natur all day long. Don’t these images make you feel much more calm instantly? And look at […]

So today (and tomorrow and the day after) is the big event that I have been working towards all year in my not-so-new-anymore job: The GEO-Tag der Natur! If you are curious about what’s going on there, check out our Instagram account @geo.tag.der.natur that Kati is doing an amazing job with! As you can imagine, […]

Yesterday we looked at a very cool wake that Nena sent in as a #friendlywaves, today I have a nice gif for you to illustrate one of the points that I was trying to make. We are looking out of a porthole at a ship sailing past. And the further the ship sails, the wider […]

This is a #friendlywaves challenge, where I try to explain other people’s wave photos and they tell me how I did. I love it when my friends see waves, think of me, whip out their cameras, take pictures, and send them to me! In this case, Nena even used a telephoto lens and took the […]

Remember I did this for work? We ended up with pretty cool pictures, like this one: And as I was standing in the water, guess what I was doing? Taking pictures of the ring waves propagating away from my feet! :D And I find it so amazing how you can start a wave train moving […]

A week ago already, Frauke and I went on an evening walk in Kiel Holtenau. Beautiful wave watching to be done there as always! Here you see the one side of a ship’s V-shaped wake approaching our vantage point. You can see the individual “feathers” of the wake: Short wave crests, all parallel to each […]

Anyone who has ever read my blog, seen my Instagram, or met me in person knows: The ocean is hugely important for me. The ocean is important for my mental health, looking at water just makes me happy and calm and content. The ocean is also the foundation of life on this planet: It supplies […]

On our work trip to Brodowin to prepare the GEO-Tag der Natur (which will take place here only  a little more than a week from now! Crazy!), I had the chance to do some cool wave watching on different lakes. Above, for example, you see wind waves coming in from the right, and their very […]

Yesterday, I happened to be at Parsteiner See for work. At first, the sea was completely calm and the only waves were the ones we made doing our photo shoots, like so: Other than that, the lake was completely calm. But then suddenly, I spotted a breeze going over the lake. It becomes visible in […]

Did you notice that most tourist ships on the Spree in Berlin don’t actually have nice bow waves? Luckily I found one that does! (see above) Because what then happens is that a nice wake develops, too. Below you see the turbulent wake right behind the ship, and the feathery V-shaped wake (with the ship […]

What I find really fascinating about watching waves in the atmosphere rather than on water is that all the waves that become visible are not surface waves like on water, but internal waves. Which we have to go to great lengths to make visible in water (for example by adding dyes in tank experiments) but […]

On Thursday I went on a “let’s go for a walk, but if it starts raining too much, we’ll just go have coffee” trip with a friend to the east shore of Kiel fjord. And it’s always nice to get a different perspective! For example below: You see the large cranes from the shipyards that […]

On a bike tour with my friend Frauke in Greetsiel two or three weeks ago, she pointed out how well one could see that the waves on the puddles left in the Wadden Sea close to low tide were wind-generated. That was that for the bike tour — now I had to take pictures. Below […]

Last weekend, while wave watching at one of my favourite spots, I observed something curious. Look at the movie below, this is what the turbulent wake of a ship usually looks like right behind the ship: As the ship moves forward through the water, it displaces water and right behind it, it creates a hole […]

Talking about capillary waves the other day, I thought I’d show you some more pictures of them. Today not in a close up, but rather their overall effect on surface roughness. See how one side of the water is all smooth except for the occasional wave (for which you can clearly distinguish its crest and […]

Wakes are always interesting to watch. But usually, I am showing wakes of ships going straight ahead. So today, I have something cool for you: The wake of a ship doing a 90 degree turn! And what that does is that the feathery wake that is usually V-shaped now gets deformed! And this deformation of […]

This is the blogpost I wanted to write today before I got distracted by all the adventures on MS Stadt Kiel with sightseeing and swing dancing and all the good stuff that wasn’t wave watching. I had even uploaded all the pictures of this morning’s wave watching walk on my blog already, but then things just […]

I’m lucky to have great friends like Alice, who was spontaneous enough to go on a mini cruise with me today (for which I was only given tickets when I was already on my way to meet her somewhere else). So we boarded the historic MS Stadt Kiel and the adventure began! (Note the Europe […]

Yesterday, I took some pretty pictures of a red balloon floating on Kiel fjord, some seagulls swimming close to it, and — of course, most importantly — the seagull’s waves. You see some that they just made where you can still see how they relate to where they are swimming now. But then there are […]

This might not be the kind of water that people usually like to look at during their lunch break — I admit, it does not look particularly inviting. But look at how much the mud can tell us about what’s going on in the water! I love how the overexposed seagull is stirring up a […]

At first glance, the picture above might not look too appealing. Dusty, almost stagnant water in a drainage ditch? Ok, the dust might actually mainly be pollen, which makes it slightly better. Oh, and it also provides us with insights about the flow in the channel! See, for example, how there seems to be a […]

Happiness is: Making waves, watching them spread, watching them disappear. Here, you see waves that I made by gently rocking a small row boat. You see them radiating away from me… Below, I set off a set of waves. And watched it travel away, over the lake, the water quickly returning to the smooth, undisturbed […]

My friend Alice (of the awesome Instagram @scied_alice and the equally awesome blog, which you should totally follow) sent me a #friendlywaves from her trip to Cyprus. She said that this was a simple one, so I am looking forward to what else she has up her sleeve once I pass this test ;-) So here we go […]

What I love about my job (in addition to the awesome job itself, obviously)? That my office is located in pretty much the coolest spot in Hamburg when it comes to touristy views of the city. So much great wave watching (and ship watching) to be done here! For example below, see the small ferry on […]

A beautiful picture: the pink sky, purple clouds, a peaceful channel flowing in between lush greens that the calm water surface mirrors back, a bridge somewhere in the background, connecting the shores, both in reality and in the image on the water. Early morning harmony. Hygge? And what jumps at me? Waves! Which I think […]

The title says it all, I guess ;-) In the picture above, you can still see the ship on the left, and having seen the ship, I am sure you can recognise the turbulent wake in the picture below, too: It’s the lighter blue stripe towards the horizon with darker, rougher sea surface to either […]

(Disclaimer: The physics the title refers to are somewhere in the second half of the blog post when I am done rambling) In case you are wondering why I am blogging so much all of a sudden: Sometimes I just love to spend a couple of hours on my sofa, drink something warm, and play […]

As someone living on the German Baltic Sea coast, I don’t spend a lot of time on the North Sea coast (except, actually, my week-long vacation after Easter with my godson and his family, and when my friend Frauke and I went to Sylt earlier this year, or when Frauke and I are going back […]

I took the selfie above mainly to send to my mom from my vacation in Dornumersiel on the German North Sea coast. But then when looking through the hundreds of pictures I took that day, I realized that not only was my hair parted on the wrong side because it was so windy (ha!), the […]

After doing a #friendlywaves post from a Norwegian fjord yesterday, let’s do another one from somewhere south of Bergen, by my friend Arnt. Very different mood today! What I find super fascinating about the picture below is how clearly you see the ship’s feathery wake in the reflection of the street lamps on the bridge, […]

The other day, my friend and co-author Pierré sent me pictures he took during fieldwork in a Norwegian fjord. As I, sadly, wasn’t there, all I can do now is admire the pictures and wish I had been there. And, of course, do a #friendlywaves — an interpretation of a wave field that a friend […]

So the main reason I got up early today and went for a run was because when I woke up and checked the weather forecast, it said that it would be raining and even snowing for the next hour. And since I wanted a really good reason to hang on my sofa and drink hot […]

Here is a puzzle for you. Walking along a beach, first, the waves looked like this: One wave breaking at a time. That’s the situation you also see in the foreground of the picture below, while in the background, a little further down the beach, something else starts happening. If we look closely at that […]

You see them a lot here on Kiel fjord when it’s windy, and this is what they looked like last Saturday: Foam stripes than run parallel to the coast for as long as the coast is a sea wall (or at least something fairly straight). What’s going on there? I have seen them over and […]

Occasionally working from home is awesome for many reasons, but mainly because I can use the time usually spent on commuting on … wait for it … wave watching. With my cup of coffee so I can warm up my fingers in between taking tons of pictures. But I just love it. See below how […]

Now that the weather is nice and sunny again, here is what it looked like only last Saturday. It wasn’t even really stormy, but windy enough so that the ships leaving the locks at Kiel Holtenau were working a lot harder than usual. Especially difficult when you are almost empty and then there is a […]

On Sunday, I set out to see a large cruise liner go through the locks at Kiel Holtenau. What happened, though, was that a ship with a smiley painted on its deck came first. Do you see the two shadows to the right of the ship, the left one aligning with the one side of […]

When it’s all foggy and there are hardly any waves, sometimes help comes from the most unexpected places. Today: condensation trails that are reflected on the water! Isn’t it interesting to see how depending on the angle of the trails waves show up a lot or hardly at all? The condensation trail on the right […]

Some throwback Friday evening wave watching (at the locks at Kiel Holtenau with my friend Sara for a nice and relaxing end of the week) to start the new week. The best! First: The pilot boat going towards the locks. Unusually visible wake — they are going fast today! Plus an interesting sheltering of waves: […]

Do you see the half circle waves connecting the “feathers” of the feathery V-wake? I love wave watching in the early morning, this light is just the best!

Last stop on my work trip that — apart from doing important work, obviously — brought me to Berlin for some wave watching and to Brodowin to look at beaver dams: Eberswalde. Waiting for an appointment, I sat in the sun next to this adorable little waterfall and looked at so many nice examples of […]

Berlin is full of interesting history to discover … for example that of ships that have gone past on the Spree! :-D Let’s start with some easy wave watching. In the picture above, you see a ship and its wake (both parts: the turbulent one where the ship has gone, and the feathery wake that […]

On a recent evening stroll with a friend, the seal basin looked like this: “Do you think there are any seals in there today?” she asked. “Why yes, of course, don’t you see the waves?” I replied. Because obviously in a basin sheltered by the wind and with no moving parts in it except possibly […]

I just love this picture: The two boats in the front are going at the same speed (the trainer is driving right next to the person in the row boat over a long distance), yet look at how different the two ships’ wakes look! The motor boat has this huge, breaking, turbulent wake. Even though […]

Looking at Kiel fjord in the picture below, it is quite obvious from the shape of the waves that those waves are some ship’s wake. Why is that obvious? Because the waves a) have a very short wavelength for their height, and b) are also all of the same wavelength. What I mean by that […]

On our trip to the west coast yesterday, I observed something really cool: Sand roll waves (I think!) in the sand dunes! But before I get to that, this is the setting on Sylt. A sandy beach opening up to the North Sea, that is separated from the land by sand dunes which are overgrown with […]

You know how they say that the journey is the destination? That was certainly the case for my spontaneous mini-vacation yesterday (and how awesome is it that my #BestTravelBuddy is up for a cross country trip on a day’s notice?). We went all the way from the east coast to the west coast — which […]

After all the professional drop photography I talked about yesterday, here is some of my own from a walk that I took after the amazing and slightly overwhelming experience of giving the laudation speech at the opening of an art exhibition. Below, I really liked how the wave rings have such different sizes and amplitudes […]

Do you see those weird traces going away from us, perpendicular to the wave crests, but in parallel to the bright stripes on the sea floor (I talked about those in yesterday’s post), looking almost like waves but not quite? What’s going on there? Something very cool! :-) In the gif below, I have drawn […]

What is it that we actually look at when we go wave watching? Water is pretty much clear (or at least it is in the spots where I like to go wave watching), so how come we are able to see waves? What we are looking at are not actually the waves themselves, but at […]

Yes, we are back to wake watching! Today I went to a new-to-me wave watching spot: The bridge across Kiel canal close to the Holtenau locks, which you see in the background of the picture below. And I should have checked out my favourite ship tracking app for better timing, I had to wait for […]

After talking a lot about turbulent wakes this week, here are two pictures of different kinds of wakes. They are of course turbulent, too, but on a very different scale. In the picture above, see how you see pairs of eddies on either side of the row boat’s wake? That’s where the oars were in […]

Since we seem to be on the topic of wake watching these days, here are some pictures I took when visiting my friend Liz at the European Cruise Service’s offices in Bergen the other day. She had already told me about the awesome wave watching to be done from their meeting room, but see for […]

Usually I look at wakes when ships are long gone, or at least leaving. Today, let’s look at one where the ship is coming towards us and we see how a bow wave turns into the feathery V-shaped wake! That’s actually all I want to say today. Except look at how well you see where […]

Yesterday I wrote about why a ship’s turbulent wake stays visible for such a long time after the ship has gone. Here just more pictures of the same phenomenon because apparently I cannot NOT take pictures of this kind of stuff. Above: Very clearly very turbulent. Below: Less energetic, but the large eddies still move […]

Speaking of wake watching, the other day I wrote about long distance wave watching in the sunset, i.e. what kind of things one can deduce on surface roughness (and its causes) from different reflections of the setting sun on the water. And then I was asked why ships’ wakes were still visible for such a […]

It all began when I spotted a wake (the feathery, dark line going across the water behind that boat house) and decided I needed to show the world how cool it is to do #wakewatching. Check it out in the images below: The water is pretty calm, apart from some locally generated wind waves. But […]

How much physics can you spot in a single picture? What I see here: Waves and their reflection on the sea wall (Do you see the two main fields? One coming in from the top right, and then the other one (technically the reflection of the first one) going out to the top left) Total […]

Have you ever noticed how much you can observe when you look at water from a distance? For example in these pictures, you see the tracks of ships that are long out of sight! Do you see the circle that one obviously drove before leaving our field of view? For the ships far out in […]

Stupid as it sounds, one of my favourite wave watching spots in Bergen is a busy bridge with a view onto another busy bridge. But the bridge goes across a very narrow opening which connects Storelungegårdsvannet, which you see in the pictures, with a fjord and ultimately the open ocean. As the opening is a […]

On Elin’s student cruise (read more about that here) very nice wave watching was to be had, both on the water as well as in the sky. In the picture below, if you look slightly left of the mountain top in the right of the picture, you see five parallel cloud stripes — evidence of […]

Recently, more and more of my friends send me pictures of waves they spotted when walking along a lake side or taking a ferry ride. I love how contagious wave watching is, and I love sharing my fascination with you! :-) Here are some pictures that Fred sent me of his lovely Sunday walk today. There […]

Today we are focussing on tiny waves right near the shore inside the sheltered harbor. See how below there are two wave fields, one with longer waves with crests that are parallel to the water’s edge, and then shorter ones propagating at a right angle relative to the first field? Where the rope swims on […]

Beautiful morning arriving back in Kiel… Looking downwind, the weather might seem pleasant (especially when focussing on the sunrise). But looking upwind however, the wind rows on the water as well as the white caps on the waves indicate that it’s quite windy! Very cool: the turbulent wake of a ship interrupts the wave field […]

Wave watching from high up gives you a whole new perspective on wakes, and depending on the lighting, features in the wave field become more prominent or fade away. See for example below the ferry: You very prominently see the turbulent wake right behind the ship, and you see the waves of the wake opening […]

Even when I fully intend to just go for a Saturday afternoon walk to catch up with a friend, this is what happens… I get distracted by waves. Like the crisscrossing pattern of waves and their reflections that you see below. Or the amazing bow waves of ships passing by. Isn’t it fascinating what a […]

I’ve been wondering. Are foggy mornings where all you can see are waves (and a couple of seagulls) opportunities on which everybody else sees the world like I always see it (i.e. mainly focussed on waves), or do “normal people” just see the seagulls and, well, fog? Below, for example, the first thing I notice […]

There is a theme these days: one of Hamburg’s most famous sights, the concert hall called Elbphilharmonie. And not only is it a pretty impressive buildings, it’s located right at the port of Hamburg, and, more importantly, right across from my new work place! Yesterday morning there was a lot of ice on the puddle […]

From dawn til dusk (which wasn’t actually as long a time as it sounds ;-)), first day in my new job as programme manager of the citizen science project on biodiversity “GEO-Tag der Natur“. I am looking forward to great views on the way to and from work! And I am suuuper excited to be […]

You might have noticed that in today’s first post there was a lot less water in the Kiel fjord than in yesterday’s post (starting this year strong on the blogging front! I like it! And don’t worry, I won’t be keeping up this pace :-D). But look how little water there actually is! In the picture above […]

Guess the title says it all today ;-) Just kidding. Below you see a movie of a neat interference pattern I observed this morning. The situation is similar to yesterday in that the ferry has sailed past and the wake runs up on those bathing steps. But: today it’s quite windy and the wind waves’ crests […]

Ending 2018 in style and exactly the way I want to continue in 2019: wave watching and dipping into Kiel fjord! 2018 has been an exciting year and a lot of changes that will shape 2019 to be very different from anything I have ever done before have already been set in motion. But despite […]