students visited our centre for field marine education
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Creating Awareness about Marine Conservation in Palk Bay (2007 - 2022)
A student observes plankton from Palk Bay to understand how food chain starts in marine environment
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Field lectures are more powerful way of communicating the nature conservation among children
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Students curiously discuss about marine a animals from local sea at our museum
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Underwater images and videos of local coast shown to children to let them understand the beauty and importance of the coast
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Scuba demo helps to explain how our team do seagrass survey and restoration, which is one of the favourite sessions for the students
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In 2007, a 600 km solo sea kayak was carried out along the coast of Tamil Nadu (southeast coast of India) for creating awareness about the conservation of local marine ecosystems including dugongs, seagrasses, coral reefs, and mangroves. In the following years, about 40000 people including school students, university students, fisherfolks, and government officials have attended our marine conservation awareness events in the last 15 years through folk music, school level awareness education programs, competitions, seminars, training, field trips, and distribution of awareness materials. This continuous awareness at the local and sub-national level has built rapport with the stakeholders for the rescue and release of dugongs, and mapping and restoration of seagrass beds.
- Capacity building of staff and volunteers from the local community.
- We produced a large set of underwater photos and videos of seagrass habitats and dugongs from the local coast.
- We set up our marine education center called “Palk Bay Environmental Education Centre” in 2011.
- We distributed more than 25000 awareness materials to the stakeholders in the last 15 years.
- We organized (seminars/training/camps/field trips) on nonprofit basis for school students, university students, fisherfolks as well as government officials.
- Continuous efforts for a few years in nature conservation awareness can change the mindset and support from local stakeholders.
- Producing our photos, and videos and sharing our field experience in dugong rescue, release, and seagrass restoration are important tools.
- The capacity building of staff and volunteers from the local community helped to spread awareness for more than a decade continuously.
- Setting up our marine education campus close to the target area (seagrass beach) is a major advantage, which gives direct exposure to the visitors.