NANAIMO, BRITISH COLUMBIA, JUNE 8, 2022 – ‘Growth’ was the focus of SEAMOR’s World Oceans Day event – and is a focus for our company for 2022. We wanted to make our WORLD OCEANS DAY activity bigger than ever this year. Our goal – to reach and involve more people in the celebration of our oceans. So, we partnered with Elaine Parker and her team at Nanaimo Science and came up with an idea to offer free activities at Departure Bay beach.
“We at Nanaimo Science were so pleased to be part of World Oceans Day activities with SEAMOR Marine. Being able to provide educational programming to so many students was a great way to recognize this day and share why keeping our oceans free of pollution is so important. Science outreach is at the core of what we do at Nanaimo Science – we were glad to partner with SEAMOR Marine on this special day.”, Elaine Parker, Executive Director.
Students were treated to a presentation from our SEAMOR Marine engineers Jerry and Pat on how an ROV works and moves underwater. These young minds asked a lot of great questions: “How deep can it go”; “What happens if a shark attacks it”; and my favourite, “How much does it cost?”. Our guest speaker, Caitie Frenkel, Environmental Scientist from the University of Victoria, talked about research she had done in collaboration with the T. Buck Suzuki Foundation on how ghost gear gets lost, how they are researching gear loss hot spots, and the effects on marine life. We also explained how organizations are using ROVs to collect and clean up ghost gear.
Nanaimo Science had educational displays about ocean litter, microplastics, and hands-on activities for students to learn about the challenges of ocean pollution on animals and marine habitats. All were a big hit and our 30 minutes with each class zipped by.
All in all, we saw 155 students from 8 classes, 3 schools and 1 home school program. Response to the event was so positive, that plans are already underway do it again next year. Who wants to join us to make it even bigger and better?
“There is a lot of pride here at SEAMOR with the work our ROVs are doing to help with ocean cleanup projects. Being able to share that with our own community and teach children how simple choices like cleaning up after yourself at the beach can make a huge difference, made this my best World Oceans Day so far.”, Inja Ma, CEO, SEAMOR Marine.