Mark Peters, the Aquarium’s outreach teacher, recently visited Gansbaai with our mobile teaching trailer. This small fishing village has long been an abalone battleground with extensive poaching taking place in the area. Mark talked to schoolchildren in the village about the consequences of poaching undersized abalone and crayfish. He also explained to them how permits work and how much the quotas allow one to remove from the sea.

 

A principal of one of the schools allocated a boy named Elias to help Mark. Elias is well known as a‘runner’ for poachers in the area. When the poachers came to the school fence later that day and called the children away, Mark was sure that Elias would leave to join them. One by one the children left and followed the poachers, but Elias stayed on. They called him persistently, but he nervously remained at the trailer, refusing to leave. When the principal came out to see how the morning was progressing, he was astonished to find Elias at the trailer. "How on earth did you manage to keep him at school?" he asked Mark. Somehow our outreach programme had made an impact on Elias and he was sufficiently intrigued to ignore the calls from the poachers.

 

Our outreach programme plays a vital role in effectively communicating the ‘ocean’ message to children such as Elias. The trailer is equipped with on-board life-support systems and we are able to transport a collection of small, live sea animals to school groups and communities. Children are able to experience and learn about the intricacies of these creatures. Many of these young people may be employed by the fishing industry in the future and they need to know as well as understand the ocean ecosystems so that they can use them in a sustainable manner.

 

When the trailer arrives at a school, the surrounding area is transformed into a temporary outdoor learning centre. Tables and chairs are brought out from the classrooms and the scene is set for a wonderful day of new experiences. Hands-on interactive activities allow students to enter the world of sea life. Workshops are also offered in the afternoons to teachers from the neighbourhood. They leave, armed with fact sheets and new teaching methods, full of exciting and invigorating lesson ideas, to be tried out in their classrooms.

In the past three years more than 18 000 children have benefited from our outreach efforts. The key to our success has been to experiment with and reflect on the different teaching methods. Our experience has shown that a combination of live animals, an outdoor setting and input from community teachers, culminates in an effective and powerful outreach programme. Although we still have a lot to learn, we have come a long way. After all, Elias stood up to the poachers!

Our Education Centre is always on the lookout for innovative ways of using our skills and there is a constant need for flexibility in the way we educate. This was evident when our outreach teacher, Mark Peters, and I visited two subject advisors from Cape Town’s southern education district. Both have a creative and innovative approach to education and have expressed their appreciation for the valuable work done by the Education Centre at the Two Oceans Aquarium. However, they showed us that the students in their district had a greater short-term need - to pass matric biology.

 

We are very fortunate that our teaching staff collectively bring years of teaching experience (primary, high and tertiary levels) to the Aquarium’s rich and vibrant environment. As a result, we were confident that we could help underprivileged students achieve good matric results in biology by giving them the opportunity to attend an intensive holiday programme that covered the entire matric biology syllabus. Before things got under way, we presented a comprehensive programme to the teachers and modified it according to their suggestions. Each teacher selected four students who showed potential, despite having achieved low marks in their June biology exam.

So it was that 60 enthusiastic matric pupils arrived to spend a week at the Aquarium. We put aside our normal, innovative environmental approach in favour of exam-focused education. Lessons on study skills were interspersed with theory, practicals and visits to our exhibits. By physically doing the practicals, students understood the course material better and were able to comprehend the exam questions. For the first time, many students used the correct equipment. They performed food tests, dissected kidneys and, more importantly, answered mock matric exam questions. It helped them understand the theory, which had previously stumped them. The only complaint was that there was not enough food!

 

The course was so successful that a similar one is scheduled for July 2004. We are also planning a training programme for matric biology teachers during the April vacation where we will show them how to conduct practicals. This initiative was groundbreaking in terms of what we, as an environmental education centre, are doing. Students were taught what was necessary for their matric exams. At the end of the course, they believed in themselves and felt more hopeful about achieving good marks in their matric biology exam.

It was incredible to see the joyous faces, as learners understood material for the first time! More importantly, their confidence increased as the week progressed. We, together with the Department of Education, eagerly await the matric biology results to assess another important part of our operation.

Megan and Anzio are studying marine biology at university and Reza is studying veterinary science. Where is the story in this, you ask? After all, plenty of young people register for a university degree. Well, we think it’s a phenomenal achievement when you consider that none of these students had shown an interest in animals or marine life before attending the Education Centre’s Young Biologist Course. All had displayed initiative, but had nominal interest in marine biology.

The Young Biologist Course is run by Weston Barwise, Nathalie Nicolaai and Bianca Engel, was designed as a basic marine biology and leadership course, for Grade 10 students. This enrichment programme is aimed at pupils who have done well up to grade 9 or who have shown potential. We ran the course two years ago, but have been left with a gap as the sponsorship was withdrawn. Recently we linked up with the College of Science and Technology (COSAT) to do the course. Students at this college have been selected from 17 different schools and go on to complete their matric at COSAT in Khayelitsha. We felt they were people for whom we could make a difference.

We are very grateful as this college managed to get their own sponsorship which helped enormously as it allowed us to bus the students in, provide lunch and it covered the cost of their weekend camp. Some students experienced the Aquarium for the first time and others (who had shown no interest in sea life at all) were impressed as they learned about ecosystems, marine vertebrates, data collection and ecology. It was an extremely successful week, with students spending the last two days at the De Hoop Nature Reserve. The high point was hearing one girl, who had never swum before or worn goggles emerge from a rock pool, shouting, "Look at all these animals, there is an octopus I’m having so much fun!"

Our aim is to make a great impression on the students, who will in turn impact on their communities. Once they receive their certificates, pupils are required to do community service such as a beach cleanup or start an environmental club at their school. The vision behind these courses is to lift people out of their ordinary surroundings and give them a chance to experience the realm of environmental education. We feel there are many students who could benefit from this programme, but are unable to do so because of a lack of funds. We look forward to obtaining new sponsorship to run more courses.

We would also like to develop a separate course for those students who have done well in the Young Biologist Course. This programme would introduce them to the industries which employ marine biologists- we would take them to a mariculture facility where animal marine farming takes place or show them a fish-processing factory. This would help pupils understand the role that marine biologists play and would generate an even greater interest in studying marine biology as a career. That’s the wonderful thing about environmental education – we get the opportunity to inspire students into making different life choices!