Meet the sharks: Outreach | Oceans Aware Educational Project
Project Overview
“Meet the Sharks” has been very successful and has received much praise since its initiation. In its short existence, the program has made a significant impact on students and has created a foundation for interest in South Africa’s marine environment. Inspired by this impact, Oceans Aware decided to mobilize the program in effort to reach a wider audience. We strongly believe that ones financial status or ability to travel to Mossel Bay should not be a barrier to obtaining knowledge about the marine world around them.
Therefore, we have developed a supplemental outreach program. This program, the logical expansion for our Mossel Bay based program is designed to reach school children throughout the Garden Route. On a weekly basis our Oceans Aware educators travel to schools in the Garden Route area in order to present educational lectures and conduct interactive games and activities within the same objective as the Mossel Bay program.
The “Meet the Sharks: Outreach” program has been developed as a collaborative effort from established marine scientists (who have been featured in documentaries on National Geographic, the Discovery Channel and the BBC), as well as teachers, and marine educators from aquaria in South Africa, the United States, Italy, Australia, and Switzerland, to ensure accuracy and that passion for the marine environment is passed along to the children. Oceans Aware believes that it is essential to provide participants in the “Meet the Sharks” program with the highest quality and engaging experience possible. Due to the fact that this program is unable to utilize an aquarium setting or travel out to sea, we rely heavily on multi-media presentations to ensure the student’s experience will not be compromised.
Project Includes
- Shark biology and conservation lecture
- Shark, squid, and fish anatomical dissections:
The children will be divided in smaller groups to have a more hands-on experience. Having several educators will allow us to perform several dissections at the same time. The sharks utilised for educational dissections are obtained from the dead by-catch of commercial fishing vessel. We do not support fishing activities which target shark and ray species. - Video documentary (featuring Oceans Research Scientists):
Various hands-on education activities and games for primary classes designed to reinforce and demonstrate important ecological and biological concepts in a fun and memorable way. These activities include:
- a marine environmental theatre where children can learn paramount conservation issues through funny and friendly characters such as a dolphin, a shark, and a fisherman
- age appropriate educational games used to demonstrate predator/prey strategies, habitat destruction, and behavioural adaptations among others
- an underwater scene drawing competition - As for the Mossel Bay based program, each student will receive a cool shark poster to reinforce the experience and valuable concepts they learned during their participation in the program.
The more youth we can reach with the “Meet the Sharks” program, the better opportunity we will have to make positive changes in the way South Africans view the marine environment and the species that reside in these waters.
Contact us for more information
For more information about our Meet the sharks: outreach project, please don't hesitate to get in contact via the following enquiry form.