Additionally, 50 people will be trained in sustainable bee keeping, with the aim of empowering them to generate revenue from the sale of honey and related goods, and 130kg of trash will be removed from Msimbazi River.

Mikoko Pamoja plants 4,000 mangrove seedlings (Sonneratia Alba) annually, which capture carbon and serve as a carbon credit. Changes to the sites from human development and climate change have made it so that typical mangrove planting no longer works. 

Their project tests the Riley Encasement Technique, an innovative replanting method, in a bid to rehabilitate mangroves in the denuded high energy intertidal areas of Gazi bay.

A large part of Mymizu's mission is education on the oceans & the plastic problem; they carry out workshops and awareness-raising activities at schools, universities & events (70+ times in the past 7 months to 5000+ people), as well as create digital content (e.g. infographics/videos) to engage people on social channels.

With SOA funds, they have developed fun, educational materials for Mymizu volunteers and community members to carry out their own workshops across Japan, enabling them to reach significantly more people through localized and volunteer-led workshops (both online and/or in-person).

They aim to ease these habit changes and encourage self-accountability through three action areas: Act Now Workshop Series, Digital Communications Program, and Action Campaigns.

This fall they teamed up with the Veith House Urban Garden to deliver a fermentation workshop where they learned how to make Kimchi using in-season produce grown locally (available on YouTube). Fermenting and pickling foods is a great way to make produce last longer at the end of growing season.

More info on the action area:

(1) Act Now Workshop Series: Hosting skill-building workshops and impact-driven events working with local partners.

(2) Digital Communications Program: Creating clear and engaging social media content to inspire action.

(3) Action Campaigns: Encouraging individual actions through pledges and challenges, and engaging political action by advocating for regulatory changes based on novel research.

The information garnered from this study will provide data on manta ray life-history parameters and lend insights into whether sites repeatedly used by smaller individuals can be considered nurseries for this species, which is an understudied aspect of manta ray ecology. Information from this study will inform tourism management within the MPA.

Check out their website.

Previous monitoring work by the organization associated with this grant (Hombre y Territorio) has identified heavily polluted sites due to intensive agriculture. 

Primary activities include cleanup and litter characterization, analysis of water samples for microplastics by infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), training citizen scientists to maintain fieldwork, and communicating project impact with local policymakers and stakeholders.

Gambia Ocean Heroes is a service-learning project under the GREAT Institute created in 2018. Apart from clean up activities, the GOH supports local communities and organizations to take the lead in efforts towards promoting ocean health and reducing plastic pollution. Since 2018, GOH has collected 350 tonnes of trash along The Gambia’s coastline and is excited to expand this effort to rivers. 

Their goal is to: 1. Re-establish fish habitat and help to restore fish populations by providing artificial reefs of 40 coral spiders; 2. Increase the percentage of coral cover by transplanting 500 corals at restoration sites, and 3. Become a model of community-based conservation activities on small islands in Anambas.

The topics addressed include: fisheries, pollution, coral reefs, ghost gear, the Blue Economy, and climate change. This docuseries will educate on ocean resources and ocean problems, showcase solutions and mobilize actions, present stories from different stakeholders involved in ocean management, and aid in sharing information with schools and other interested bodies.

The project will conduct scientific research using Environmental DNA (E-DNA) and fisheries surveys to investigate the problem of sawfish bycatch, which is one of the major factors leading to the decline of sawfish populations in Merauke, Indonesia. Sawfish Project Indonesia ultimately aims to enhance the capacity of indigenous people in Merauke to continue the important work of sawfish conservation locally. This project will perform an incubator workshop to teach the youth of Merauke about sawfish conservation.

Over 3,000 fishermen in 4 fishing communities took part, including 30 fishermen association leaders who agreed to serve as ambassadors for the project and to continue to spread awareness in their community. Volunteers from the University of Buea played key roles in door-to-door sensitization, which contributed to an estimated 75% increase in awareness amongst the fishing community on the ecological importance of sea turtles.

Read more about their project and see a video of their work here. 

This project seeks to leverage data and storytelling tools to spotlight the challenge of marine pollution and its dangers to society. The project also deploys a digital campaign involving use of short videos and infographics to educate residents across West Africa on the dangers of marine pollution, and improve practices of waste management.

Read more about their project and read a recent article here.

More articles on plastic waste and marine pollution,

Paula Keener spent 18 years as the Director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) Ocean Exploration’s Education Program. A marine biologist, she conducted extensive larval and adult fish research off the Southeastern coast of the U.S. and was a research team member in the Smithsonian Institution’s Western Atlantic Mangrove Program off Belize, Central America. Keener served as a member of The President’s Panel on Ocean Exploration and as a member of the National Academies Committee on Exploration of the Seas. She served as a member of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History’s Ocean Hall Statement of Purpose Team, the National Science and Technology Council Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Human Capacity in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Working Group, the 2006 National Conference on Ocean Literacy (CoOL) Working Group, and was Conference Program Committee CoChair for Education for the Marine Technology Society (MTS) Oceans 2005 Conference in Washington, DC and the 2011 Oceans Conference in Kona, HI. She is a Past-President of the National Marine Educators Association and the South Carolina Marine Educators Association and a founding member and Past-President of the South Carolina Marine Educators’ Association. She serves as a writer and editor for scientific and technical papers, publications targeted to the general public, and served as a scientific editor for Our Ocean World radio scripts which were distributed to 150 radio stations in the United States, the National Public Radio Network satellite network, 200-plus stations of Voice of America, and the Armed Forces Network. 

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