Conservation@SEA at UWCSEA East
By India Steger, Grade 11 student, UWCSEA East
25 March 2022
UWCSEA has numerous Environmental Initiatives that have begun to investigate real-life situations in which students develop their understanding of their role in the protection, connection and nurturing of the planet. Students are taught through a wide sustainable lens about leveraging change, developing their ecological literacy, and directly engaging with interconnected systems integrated into students' everyday lives. Conservation@SEA consists of 10 Middle and High School students seeking further insight into their responsibility to understand how to protect and sustainably manage a marine ecosystem.
About Conservation@SEA
The EI is based around the 14th Sustainable development goal, 'Life below water’ as dictated by the UN, and focuses on the conservation and sustainable use of the resources present in the marine environment. They hope to "embrace the habitual diversity of our oceans, to appreciate marine life" while using an advocatory point of view. Throughout their sessions, Conservation@SEA brainstorms current global issues they can look into and see how they can contribute to helping these issues as an EI and through the school community's participation.
Aquarium
At the heart of the school canteen lies the core of the Conservation@SEA EI: the aquarium. The aquarium holds many different kinds of tropical fish and coral species, and it was installed to help advocate and educate the school community on the importance of sea conservation. A student stated that they hope the aquarium "[will] help people understand the environmental initiative better, and might even encourage some people to try and make a change too." Conservation@SEA hopes to highlight the importance of the aquarium and the conservation of marine life.
The main aim of implementing the aquarium was to help spread awareness on the importance of preserving the vast marine ecosystem present in coral reefs from the destructive nature of climate change and human pollution. The saltwater aquarium holds many different tropical fish species, such as the Banggai Cardinalfish and sand starfish, which live alongside coral and marine plant species. The tank impresses the school community with the beauty and importance of the ocean in the world, bringing Conservation@SEA's hopes of spreading better awareness of preserving our marine ecosystems just a step closer.
Whale Shark
The aquarium is not the only exciting project that Conservation@SEA is involved in. The EI also collaborated with Conservation International to tag a whale shark named Jeffrey Guppy in the past year. This partnership has successfully allowed new data collections about the currently endangered species. In addition, they have collaborated with Primary school and additional services in seeking new ways to bring about change-making in the school.
Although the EI has already completed numerous inspiring projects over the past couple of years, they still hope to do much more. For example, they plan to follow a group of conservationists at the SEA aquarium in Singapore to understand what can be done internationally and teach students more about the different ongoing conservation tactics. Furthermore, there are hopes of organising beach clean-ups and boat trips to transfer their knowledge into practice.
Overall, Conservation@SEA continues to develop their knowledge about the different ways of tackling the growing issues related to marine conservation and hopes to inspire a new line of passionate change makers.