An educational event for kids, "Marine diversity around: time to protect it"

On the 15^th of August 2023, the kids and marine specialists gathered at the Tylihul Estuary in Ukraine. This area is safe from the mines, and the water is clean (because the sluices at Lyman were closed during the Kakhovka dam event). The event was held in the local school.

The goal was to raise awareness about marine biodiversity and threats to it and promote eco habits and other measures to support it.

The event included:

• lectures about marine biodiversity and different habitats (
Figure 1);

• the story of how the Tylihul Estuary was established;

• quest for eco habits on how to sort the waste (by the Kherson group of young environmentalists) – Figure 2;

• master class on the mini artificial reefs’ construction “Making a house for marine inhabitants”. The Native Oyster Restoration Alliance (NORA) jointly with the Reef ball foundation have provided free of charge real environmentally tested reef balls proforma and a special recipe for materials to make them. For the first time in Ukraine, such reefs were installed in the Tylihul Estuary to support biodiversity (Figure 5). At the same time, kids got an opportunity to create their own “house for fish and molluscs” from natural materials (Figure 3);

• game to test what the kids remembered from the stories, presents, and sweets with juice (Figure 4).

The target group includes the kids from the nearby areas and their teachers.

We also applied the “training of trainers” method when elder kids from Kherson taught the younger kids how to sort. This way the Kherson group of young environmentalists, who are not evacuated to the different cities got opportunity to meet and get reinforced in their environmental activities.

It was a great event with a lot of positive emotions and new knowledge, which hopefully will be applied to support our Black Sea marine diversity.