The new school year has only been underway for a few weeks now but already the Marine Education project out here in Seychelles has been busy visiting schools.  We have been running sessions with the teachers and the children from crèche through to P6.  In fact having just done a quick calculation it seems that in just 2 weeks of the school visits getting underway again we have sung songs, read marine related stories and discussed marine awareness with over 1,400 children under the ages of 12 and over 180 teachers – phew!  In addition to this there was a special session with 8 incredibly enthusiastic deaf children and a group of post secondary students from the School of Visual Arts, who will hopefully be putting some of what they learnt into their artwork.

If jumping around with hundreds of 4 year old is not enough of a full day’s work we were thrown an extra challenge with the release of ‘Shark Night’ at the cinema here.  The children and many of the teachers frequently referred to the film as fact (as if it were a documentary) when the topic of sharks was being discussed in our talks.  Hopefully the timing of our talks at the schools and the movie release worked in our favour and we were able to highlight the differences in the behaviour of a Hollywood movie star shark and a real life ocean dwelling shark.  It is an on-going theme within the talks to express the vital importance of sharks and how misinterpreted they are in the movies.  The interesting thing is when you ask a 5 year old what their favourite marine creature is the answer will so often be a shark.  The fascination continues through primary but at some point, for many, this fascination changes to fear and sadly fear so often means not wanting to conserve.  This change in attitude may well come from adults which is why the teacher training sessions will hopefully have a positive change of perception.

Another challenge we faced last week occurred while spending the morning at a resort undertaking guest talks and snorkels.  It was in fact slightly too rough to snorkel, but the guests seemed happy to learnt about “Who’ who on the Coral Reef” from the comfort of the bar.  Due to the rough seas 4 hawksbill hatchlings were swept back onto the beach having tried to head out to sea after hatching from their eggs.  This gave a good opportunity for the guests to see a turtle up close and have some extra turtle information.  Attempts were made by the resort staff to release the hatchlings but sadly the waves just kept washing them back onto the beach.  The hatchlings were getting tired and weak, we needed to find a calm beach.  Just as we were about to transport our 4 little hawksbills there was excitement on the beach.  It turned out another hatchling had been found on the beach by one of the ‘beach sweepers’ and given as a ‘gift’ to the guests – just to note this is not resort policy!  The guests however were thrilled with their new pet!  Marine educator into action - it took a fair amount of polite persuasion, scientific facts and in the end pleading before we were able to take our fifth thoroughly exhausted hatchling with his buddies to a calm bay and release them all.  They slowly headed off to face what life has ahead for them. Hopefully many years of fun in the ocean – we wish them well.