Academy by the Sea
Seychellois teenagers are surrounded by an incredible marine ecosystem, but they do not have the opportunity to learn very much about it. Academy by the Sea exposes them to the fascinating world that lies beyond the beach.
David Rowat
Hello, I am the chairman of the Marine Conservation Society Seychelles and a member of the IUCN Shark Specialist Group. I moved to Seychelles with my wife Glynis in 1985 and through our diving activities we started to see ways in which we could help conserve local marine life. We began implementing several marine conservation and awareness projects, and one of the first of these was teaching children from the National Youth Service camp how to snorkel in the marine national park where the camp was situated. For many of the youngsters this was the first time they had ever...
Seychelles integrated marine education programme
The project will develop a marine science and awareness component for the education system in Seychelles. This will start at the secondary school level and carry on through to the polytechnic level with the development of a vocational diploma course for marine rangers and an optional tertiary education module in marine science at the university level.
Seychelles is an archipelago of 115 islands with a land mass of just 455 square kilometres spread across some 1.4 million square kilometres of the Indian Ocean. The goods and services that the marine environment provides have largely supported the development of the two main pillars of the Seychelles economy: tourism, based mainly on the coast and islands, and fisheries.
As the Seychelles population has grown, so has the education system, but the University of Seychelles only opened in 2009, thus there is a shortage of personnel educated to the tertiary level to guide the country’s sustainable development – not least within the marine area. That said, there is a strong awareness of environmental issues in the country fostered by an active NGO sector, which has generated considerable awareness within primary and secondary schools.
This project seeks to continue and support these activities and to build on them by providing formal education components that can lead to a career in marine science and its associated fields. The project will build on the awareness-building activities of several programmes in Seychelles, including on-going SOSF programmes, through the development of formal education modules incorporated in the curricula to better prepare candidates for entry into the Environmental and Coastal Sciences Course at the University of Seychelles. The project also aims to provide support for mature and working students to enable those currently working in the field to participate in vocational education on a day or block-release basis through scholarships or bursaries.
The overall aim of the project is to raise awareness and capacity in marine science in the Seychelles. This will enable sustainable development in the context of an expanding Seychelles community that’s living in a world with global warming. This will be accomplished through the following specific objectives:
- Increase levels of awareness about the marine environment and possible related career paths at the secondary school level;
- Increase formal knowledge and skills in marine environmental science at secondary school and polytechnic level;
- Provide facilities for people already working in the field of marine science to attain a formal diploma; and
- Provide both general and specific marine science modules within the Tropical, Coastal and Marine Science course at the University of Seychelles.