December Marine Awareness Camp a Blast!

The thirty youngsters who started their long summer school holidays with a three-day Marine Awareness Camp were blessed – not only by the experience of a Save Our Seas funded camp, but also by a South-Easterly gale. While most folk would feel cursed and rattled by forty knots of wind, the group – which included our Marine Explorers Club pioneers – were occasionally heard shouting “Umoya zintsikelelo” above the roaring gale – isiXhosa for “The wind is a blessing!”

The Western shores of South Africa are home to huge flocks of marine birds, and plenty of time on camp is dedicated to watching the birds and learning about them. In our first bird lesson on camp, we learned about one of the main driving forces behind the large populations of bait fish and birds – our abundant summertime South-Easters. This wind, sometimes called the Cape doctor for its role in clearing away clouds and pollution, drives warm surface water offshore, resulting in an upwelling of cold nutrient rich water from below. It is these nutrients that make for the plankton rich conditions that support vast populations of bait fish, which in turn support huge numbers of birds. So armed with this knowledge, camp participants braved the elements with a determination to see the good in a dose of weather that we would certainly not have chosen.

There were a few brief pauses in the sand blasting – enough for us to get in the water, have some fun and do some sand sculpting. Soetwater, where our camp was held, has some beautiful sandy coves for swimming and snorkelling, and no camp is complete without an Atlantic Ocean ice-cream headache. The wind theme in our learning weaved a strand that was common to most of our topics – the huge kelp forests that thrive in the presence of nutrients, the rocky shorelines heavily endowed with algal growth and inter-tidal grazers, and the billions of sand hoppers which erupt out of the sand when one digs ones toes in – all of which are in abundance, in part, thanks to our wind.

The group comprised of children from Capricorn Primary School, which serves an informal settlement close to Muizenberg, along the shores of False Bay. The programme was ably supported by staff and interns from the South African Shark Conservancy (SASC). Apart from a full marine education programme, the camp also provided our Marine Explorers with a chance to impress some of their classmates with the knowledge they have gained from their participation in the programme. From an educator’s perspective, it was great to overhear the informal conversations between group members as knowledge and opinions were exchanged – and ample proof that peer learning can be a powerful tool in spreading awareness. Each camp participant has committed to spreading the messages learned on camp, and we look forward to hearing all about this in the New Year when we meet again.