Monday 13 June 2011

Sea Watch Celebrates World Oceans Day

World Oceans Day 2011 occurred on Wednesday 8th June. In order to celebrate this International Day of Ocean Conservation, recommended in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and recognised by the United Nations, we decided to host a day of ocean themed events. Since children were our target audience, we held the event on Saturday 4th June, the last weekend of their school holiday.

Our day began at 11am when we set up our stand on New Quay pier and our beach spot. Public awareness and education was the focus of our place on the pier with posters about our research and adopt a dolphin scheme.








Meanwhile, on the beach we carried out our cetacean based activities. These included badge making, sand sculpturing, bracelet making and face painting. After painting each others faces we each made a badge in an attempt to advertise our activities and draw in interested audiences. Unfortunately, the glorious weather acted as a hindrance as children and adults were more interested in swimming in the Sea than getting their face painted. In an attempt to attract some attention, Rachel and Deborah began making a whale sand sculpture which did attract the help of one little girl.




After lunch, we were more successful with several children interested in either building sand dolphins or making badges. As the afternoon drew to a close, we found ourselves inundated with children either wishing to make friendship bracelets or have their face painted. As Deborah demonstrated how to make the bracelets, Rachel found herself surrounded by children either wanting their face painted or queuing up to paint her arms and face!






After calling in some re-enforcements we successfully managed to paint all the children’s faces whilst describing the biology and ecology of the animals being drawn. Despite the slow start to the day, the end was highly successful and the children involved seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed their time with us.

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