Academy By The Sea meets SUBIOS

From 23rd-25th November, Seychelles celebrated the annual Festival of the Sea called SUBIOS. The festival is a celebration of the ocean and is a great opportunity for the young people of the Seychelles to get involved in giving their thoughts about our oceans through a series of competitions. The SUBIOS festival kicked off on the Friday with a celebration of students writing and artwork competition entries at the National Library, where winning students were awarded prizes donated by the Ministry of Environment and the Save Our Seas Foundation.

A great opportunity to display some of the fantastic work by ‘Academy’ students

A great opportunity to display some of the fantastic work by ‘Academy’ students.jpg

The Marine Conservation Society Seychelles (MCSS) was delighted to be a part of the events as one of the partners of the Children’s Fun Day run by the Ministry of Environment. MCSS prepared activities highlighting one of the Save Our Seas five threats to the ocean… Pollution!

Academy student Vanessa with artist Robert Alexis and their recycled creation

We were recycling rubbish by turning it into cute marine creatures. For the last few weeks we’d been collecting all our rubbish such as plastic bottles, drinks cartons, toilet roll tubes, jelly pots, newspapers, we’d even made the sacrifice of buying many Kinder eggs just to get the packaging as they could be turned into excellent baby turtles!

Academy student Dania helping children make turtles

On the day, children came and made fish, turtles, crabs, jellyfish plus many more animals. Six year old Zarah from Bel Ombre primary school was one of our most enthusiastic crafters and made a whole sea of creatures! MCSS were honoured to be joined on the day by local artist Robert Alexis who helped children (and enthusiastic adults!) create some magnificent artwork.

MCSS volunteer Darren with Aisatta and their fish bottle creation

We also ran a ‘Life of a Sea Turtle’ assault course in which children had to be an adult turtle coming from the sea to lay her eggs (running up the beach with a coconut between your legs and then burying it!), then facing the trials of a baby turtle hatchling making its way back to the sea (challenges such as spinning round so as to be disorientated after emerging from the nest, crawling under a big net avoiding litter on the beach, weaving through palm fronds stuck in the sand and then running past people throwing wet rags which represented the threat of being attacked by birds and crabs!). The prize for the quickest course time went to 13 year old Leroy who won an MCSS t-shirt.

The Life Of A Turtle Assault Course!

The Life Of A Turtle Assault Course! Great fun for all

We displayed posters of sea animals affected by pollution in the sea. We also took the opportunity to showcase some of the work on pollution created by students who attended our ‘Academy by the Sea’ marine education programme back in August, along with our information board about our education project funded by Save Our Seas Foundation. We were also thrilled to be joined by some of the Academy students who now have the ‘marine conservation bug’ and were more than willing to help out!

Academy By The Sea students’ art work

Education officer Abi March would like to say a huge thank you to MCSS volunteers Darren Whitehead, Maddy Cole, Savi Leblond, MCSS researcher Uzice Samedi, Academy students Vanessa Ah-tive, Oneal Tamboo, Dania Adrienne and Shafira Charlette and a gigantic thank you to fantastic artist Robert Alexis for all their help, THANK YOU!

Neeroy gets a helping hand from MCSS volunteer Maddy in making his turtle

The two Abi’s! MCSS education officer Abi with Abi and their fish!

Check out our facebook page ‘Academy by the Sea, Seychelles’ for more photos!