One Ocean: World Oceans Day 2019

WiseOceans celebrated World Oceans Day across the globe – trying to pack in as much help for our oceans and marine education as possible. Here is a summary of what our teams got up to.

Wales, UK

For our first World Oceans Day celebrations in Wales, we joined forces with Sea Trust to arrange a fun day dedicated to raising awareness of our incredible oceans at the Ocean Lab in Goodwick, Pembrokeshire. It was a brilliant opportunity to get together with local organisations and meet with people from all over the country to chat all things marine. People of all ages had the opportunity to join in our games: matching marine life to their habitats and young, identifying their sounds and learning how long our everyday household items could remain in our oceans. Throughout the day we had had many other activities for attendees to get involved with including tours of Sea Trust’s local marine life aquarium, as well as a beach clean, seashore safari, quizzes, face painting and of course a nibble on some marine-themed cakes!

Seychelles (Mahé)

At Four Seasons Resort Seychelles, we honoured World Oceans Day by celebrating the diversity of our oceans. We looked at tiny microscopic plankton under the microscope seeing up close what the base of the ocean food chain looks like, we listened to the mating song of the enormous humpback whale hearing the way sounds travels underwater, and we jumped in the ocean to see the reef diversity for ourselves. However, not only did we spend the day learning about marine life we also wanted to contribute towards making it a healthier place, so we rolled up our sleeves, put on some gloves and headed to Police Bay for a beach clean together with The Ocean Project Seychelles. Although at first glance the bay looked clean, we ended up filling over a dozen bin liners full of rubbish containing everything from small plastic straws to an outboard motor of a speedboat! Later on in the week we were asked to talk at Beau Vallon Primary School to commemorate the day. We had the pleasure of watching poetry readings, plays, dances, and art work by all the children in homage to our oceans. World Oceans Day for us was the perfect combination of education and conversation.

Seychelles (Desroches)

Together with the Island Conservation Society (ICS) team, we organised a beach clean-up of the whole island. We are extremely thankful to Four Seasons Resorts at Desroches Island and the Island Development Company (IDC), Blue Safari staff members as well as guests who helped us to collect a total of 284.6 kg of waste in just a couple of hours.

Plastic bottles and flip flops were the main constituents of the waste collected but it was quite astonishing to collect some intact electric bulbs, couple of mooring buoys and a small gas cylinder.

The outcome of this clean up was not only to get a temporary clean beach but also to remind people that waste can be carried over long distances and end up in areas where we would never think they would be. The amount of plastic bottles collected is another reminder of the urgent need to move to other alternatives.

With the arrival of the peak nesting season for green turtles, we plan to carry out a monthly clean-up of Desroches!

Mauritius

We organised a beach clean-up at the GRSE public beach. It went fantastically with Marine Educators Rick and Bernard facilitating it. With volunteers from Terrocean, Indigo Divers and Four Seasons Resort Mauritius at Anahita we were able to collect about 12 bags of rubbish leaving the beach very clean. A special thanks to the Four Seasons for all the logistical support!