This year, the IOW was the main organizer of the 23rd Coastal Summer School which took place on Hiddensee Island (Germany) from 12 until 22 September 2026. The summer school was organized together with the Alfred-Wegener-Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon (Geesthacht, Germany). The topic of the summer school was 'Environmental monitoring-a powerful tool for sustainable management of our seas'.

In total, 17 international students with Bachelor and Master degree with a background in Marine Sciences participated in the summer school. They came from Taiwan, Brasil, Türkiye, Greece, the UK, Sri Lanka, Finland, the Netherlands and Germany. Furthermore, one participant had a background in Marine and Naval Engineering (Rostock, Germany) and another came from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Wadden Sea Office.

This year, lecturers came from the IOW, the Ministry for Environment M-V, the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency, the Thünen Institute of Baltic Sea Fisheries, the Hereon, the Baden-Württemberg State Agency for the Environment and StreamTec Solutions. The students, therefore, learned about a wide variety of Baltic Sea topics, ranging from 'European regulations for the protection and monitoring of coastal waters' to offshore wind energy planning, coastal fish monitoring, 'exploiting public data resources for an extended spatio-temporal scale in environmental monitoring', molecular genetic techniques for environmental monitoring, water quality monitoring and 'environmental impact assessment and evaluation by means of environmental monitoring'.

In addition to the lectures, the students participated in an excursion to the heath on Hiddensee Island and a bird watching tour. The participants found the summer school—with its broad range of topics related to marine monitoring—to be a great enrichment and a good opportunity to broaden their horizons with regard to their own research focus. They agreed that Hiddensee was a very special and inspiring venue.