Report from the Open Ocean Science Centre – Red Sea
On World Environment Day, Wednesday 5th June ,13 children aged 7-10 joined forces with the Parry family who were staying at Roots Red Sea Resort and for a Big Microplastic Survey. The event began with a classroom presentation by the Open Ocean Science Centre team explaining what Just One Ocean and the Big Microplastic Survey organisations are and why their work is so important. The presentation also described how to conduct the survey and was an excellent opportunity for practising numbers, colours, shapes and measuring language in English for the children. On the beach, the children split into groups and were supervised by our guests and staff from the SEAS organisation. The children were highly engaged in the survey, had a lot of fun doing it and were interested to see how much microplastic could be found -which amounted to 25 pieces over 4 sections of beach. Lots of adults asked us what we were doing and other children on the beach wanted to join in -so we gave them litter pickers and bags and they did an impromptu beach clean! Sadly, we ran out of time so the plastic was sorted back at the Open Ocean Science Centre. But future Big Microplastic Surveys are already being planned and we will allocate more time in future so the children can enjoy sorting what they find for themselves and have a better understanding of what is on their beach that shouldn’t be there!
