Join the the Wadden Sea National Park's guided tours with ranger: oyster safari, seal safari, "Black Sun" - called starling magic by the rangers - or a tide tour exploring the low water and the dry mudflats.
Please be aware that oyster tours are only available from october to april, because oysters found in warm water can have dangerous bacterias.
Black Sun and other migration bird tours are during spring and autumn.
Learn more about oysters, seals etc. in the Wadden Sea National Park further down the page.
See the tours and times in the program above and let the ranger show you, what you can experience of tastes, sounds, colours and sights in this video of a Oyster Tour

A ranger from the Wadden Sea Visitor Centre tells about oyster safari in the Wadden Sea

Go oyster picking from fall until spring, and help eradicate the many Pacific oysters that have infested and spread throughout the Danish Wadden Sea. They are delicious - those you don’t eat can be kept fresh in the refrigerator if you stay at Danhostel Ribe Family and Youth Hostel. Oysters and Mussels can be gathered from October till May, as they are only eaten during the cool months. Ask for the scheduled Oyster excursions and other excursions in the Wadden Sea. Other excursions are “Seal excursions” and “The Wadden Sea for children”. Excursions for groups are arranged. Phone: 7544 6161.

Walk barefoot through the mud flats during low tide.

It is a pleasure to walk barefoot and look for shrimps, worms, mussels, birds, seals and much more. At the Wadden Sea Centre you can rent a Wadden Sea handcart with fishing equipment, binoculars and an activity map for children. The children can play in and learn about the Wadden Sea at the same time. Be careful. You should only be there 2 hours either side of the low tide.

Kammerslusen (Ribe Waterway Lock), Ribe (7km)

The Ribe River flows though Ribe town and has its outflow at the Waterway Lock "Kammersluse" at the Wadden Sea. Here Ribe citizens often enjoy a Sunday picnic.

Wadden Sea island Mandø

Take a tour over the seabed to the small Wadden Sea island Mandø.
It is a fantastic nature experience to drive across the bottom of the sea and study nature and animal life. The tour takes approximately 3/4 of an hour with the Mandø bus or with the Mandø tractor bus from Vester Vedsted (10 km) - both tractors that draw a "bus" with passengers trough the Wadden Sea.
Two of Denmark’s most remarkable roads, Låningsvejen and Mandø Ebbevej, go from Vester Vedsted to Mandø Island. Both roads are submerged by the tide twice daily. Låningsvejen is open to the public, if you know the tide, and know when the tide is out. Ebbevejen may only be used by the Mandø Island busses, which transports mail, students and tourists to and from the island. The Mandø Island bus schedule is also controlled by the tides. The schedules can be seen at the hostel

The Fisheries and Maritime Museum, Esbjerg (35km)

The Museum is focusing on fisheries and marine biology, the tidal wetlands (Wadden Sea), west Jutland coastal shipping and the North Sea offshore industries.
Meet the common seal and the very rare grey seal in the seal pool. You can see them fed daily. Read more: The Fisheries and Maritime Museum

Rømø Wadden Sea Island (35 km)

by the North Sea. The widest beach in Scandinavia

Animals, birds and plants in the Wadden Sea

No other place in Denmark has as many birds during the spring and fall migrations, - As mentioned before altogether between 10 and 12 million aquatic birds use the Wadden Sea to rest and feed during their migration.
Wading birds primarily eat snails, mussels and worms, and their different beak lengths mean they find different food.
Short beaked birds such as sandpipers, plovers and redshank take mud snails and mud shrimps off  the surface, while long beaked birds such as godwits  and curlews can find mussels and sandworms deeper in the sand. The Oystercatcher take care of the common cockles and the common mussels, which it is expert at opening with a quick attack on the hinge muscle or by crushing the shell. During high water the mussel banks are left to the eider ducks. Ducks primarily eat the many mud snails, mud shrimps and other things off the surface of the water, and some ducks supplement their diet with the many plants that grow in the marsh.

Lug worms, mud shrimps, common periwinkles, mud snails, sand gapers, common shrimps, sandworms, common mussels and common cockles can be seen during low tide. Microscopic algae and plankton is the reason for the Wadden Sea’s enormous population of lower life forms, because they transform inorganic materials to organic particles.

Many of our most important kinds of fish, such as plaice and sole grow up in the Wadden Sea, and during the summer schools of seasonal guests such as garfish and mullet can be seen.

The Wadden Sea, moreover, has Denmark’s largest population of common seals (harbour seals) - 5500 in 2012 - more of them can be seen around Mandø. Also a few grey seals can be seen. Seals primarily eat fish.

Seals in the Wadden Sea 

During recent years Pacific oysters have been found in the Wadden Sea. They spread very quickly, and there is concern they will out compete native mussels, and disrupt the food chain that oysters catchers, eider ducks and  herring gulls depend on. The pacific oyster’s only natural enemies are humans with a taste for delicacies, because birds are unable to open their thick shells. Pacific oysters often grow twice as large as common mussels, and there are already many tons of them in the Wadden Sea. These oysters should not be able to reproduce at our latitude, as they require a temperature of 20 degrees to thrive. Please come and help us eradicate the Pacific oyster. The tours are strenuous and not for children, and are arranged with nature guides from the Wadden Sea Centre.

Plants such as common sea-lavenders, glassworts, and sea plantains grow in the beach meadows and tolerate being flooded by salt water. Glassworts are usually the first plants to grow in the marsh, and Common Cordgrass become dominant in subsequent years. It was imported from England for its ability to bind and hold the sand.

The Tidal Area

Ebb and flood alternate along the Wadden Sea coast.
Every 24 hours there are 2 floods and two ebb tides, at six hours intervals. The reason for the variations in water depth is the moons gravitational pull. The moon is smaller than the earth, and the earth’s gravity cause the moon to revolve around the earth. But the moon's gravity is strong enough to influence the liquid part of the earth’s surface, the ocean.
About one third of the Danish Wadden Sea is submerged at low tide, while two thirds are exposed. The tide moves 1 billion cubic meters of water back and forth over the salt march.
During low tide an immense amount of food is exposed to birds, and they take advantage of this bounty.

The marsh

The marsh is land deposited by the ocean. Its composition is particles of the oceans living organisms, fine grained sand and clay. It is called silt.
Because the silt deposited during each tide is so fine, the deposit left each year is only 1-2 centimeter thick.
Fences made of two rows of poles about a half-meter apart, and filled with branches, have been built out from the coast to gain land and to encourage silting. The water easily passes through these fences at high and low tide, but each time a little silt is left behind.

When the deposits reach a certain level it becomes economically feasible to dike the land so it doesn’t flood. A number of fresh-water plants begin to grow, but the soil is still very wet and is mostly used for grazing sheep and cattle.

In recent years preservation has become important, and the silt farms are only used for maintenance and to preserve the coastline in a few places, like along Låningsvejen to Mandø.

When you go from Ribe to the Wadden Sea you go through the marsh. It is a very low area and in wintertime it is sometimes flooded and when driving on the highway around Ribe you can see water on both sides of the road. On the Ribe side of the road, the water goes up all the way to the Hostel. Read about storm surges and floods in the area here: “Storm surges in Ribe”

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