Save our seas! Programme launched to educate children about overfishing, climate change

Jamaican environmentalist Guy Harvey celebrated the launch of his pioneering Caribbean Sea awareness project, alongside dozens of high-school children earlier this week, during a special event at Beaches Resort and Gulf Club in Boscobel,

St Mary.

The Save Our Seas (SOS) programme, which runs for a year, in association with the Sandals Foundation, aims to educate young people about issues such as overfishing and climate change.

Will target students from 40 schools across the Caribbean, including Iona and Oracabessa High in St Mary.

During an hour-long presentation, which included a screening of Harvey's documentary, Sharks of North America, the renowned wildlife expert and artist explained the ultimate objective was to raise awareness about the declining health of the local marine ecosystem.

"My foundation is collaborating with the Sandals Foundation to do some outreach and education programmes here in Jamaica, and we're talking about doing some research programmes too," Harvey told The Gleaner

sensationalism

"It's all a part of the conservation process by which you gather data, learn about animals and disseminate that data to the schools, through talks such as this and YouTube and documentary videos, which have become a very important tool.

"We're not about sensationalism. We're about telling the life-histories of these animals and the predicament they face because of our overfishing."

Harvey stressed that overfishing was a huge problem, which had caused the population of the oceanic whitetip shark in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea to be reduced by 99 per cent in the last 50 years.

"There's nothing wrong with fishing. It's about doing it in a responsible way and getting rid of indiscriminate practices such as the use of fish-traps, which are so hurtful.

"Even though it's a mainstay of coral reef fisheries in the Caribbean, it's still the worst technique that can be used. We want to educate more fishermen about the value of having marine parks.

"Our generation has not done a very good job of being the guardians of marine resources, and there has been a lot of over-consumption for several decades, due to the fact people thought marine resources were limitless."

Speaking after the presentation, Sandals Foundation's director of programmes, Heidi Clarke, added: "The livelihoods of thousands of people throughout the Caribbean, and particularly in Jamaica, depend on conservation, but we don't really make the connection between the things we do every day, and how they impact our surroundings.

"It's so important for us to have young people understand the value of the ocean because, if they are to inherit a planet they helped take care of, we really need to lead by educating and having them go out into their communities as ambassadors."