Shark Bingo with Mar Sustenable

Last month we launched our new and fun shark lottery (BINGO). This educational tool aims to help kids learn about sharks, their habitats, threats and conservation laws that exist in Mexico to protect sharks. The lottery is part of Dr Nadia Rubio SOSF’s project on Holbox Island in the Mexican Caribbean.

For this work, Mar Sustentable collaborated with Ana Sofía Lorda, Director of Nuestros Mares, a Mexican initiative to support marine conservation in Latin America. During the last bit of last year and now, we have been having fun playing the shark lottery in person at very cool places on the Yucatan Peninsula, such as Holbox Island, Chiquilá port, Merida City and Cozumel. Here, we are connected to proactive kids interested in learning about sharks. We want to give a massive shout to our collaborators on Holbox Island and Chiquilá: Eduardo Pacheco Cetina, Roberto Baltazar Dominguez and Francisca Antele.

Our shark lottery has gone beyond borders through Latin America via our online class of Club de Los Tiburones Mexico (mentioned in earlier blogs), which started in 2021 as a virtual hub for kids to learn about sharks during COVID. Still today, after a year, the Club de Los Tiburones Mexico is together, and we continue to learn about sharks online. Last December, we all played the shark lottery online. We had Sofia Lorda and Carlos Perez “El Profe Tiburon” as our guests.

Photo © Nadia Rubio | Mar Sustenable

El Profe Tiburon invited his students from Colombia, Guatemala, Argentina, Costa Rica, and Chile, a student from the middle-East was also present. So we all had a thrilled moment learning about sharks, and our undergraduate intern Félix Vásquez, from Cozumel, talked about bull sharks to the kids.

We are also very proud to say that the municipal library of Cozumel will share our shark lottery via our collaborator, Eva María Merino (Director of the Municipal Library of Cozumel). The island’s government is launching a program to bring educational material to police hubs in Cozumel’s public parks. Here kids can use educational material, including our shark lottery. This action thrilled our team since it is a big step in building the community towards supporting environmental education activities related to sharks. We are happy that our educational products related to the Holbox project are spreading and that people in educational institutions are valuing them.

Click on the image above to download the PDF version. Artwork © Nadia Rubio | Mar Sustenable

Project

Nadia learns about life in the sea, from those who spend their lives around the sea. Collecting Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) about sharks, sawfishes, manatees and sea turtles, she connects this information with spatial data to understand Mexico’s marine biodiversity. Nadia is focused on Holbox Island off the Yucatan Peninsula in Quintana Roo. The island forms a coastal lagoon surrounded by mangroves (thought to be shark breeding grounds) with its seafloor covered by seagrasses. Holbox is a treasure trove of marine life that Nadia is intent on helping manage in the wake of rapid development.

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