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The World Unites On June 8 For World Oceans Day
World Oceans Day 2017 will be the biggest and best yet! For 2017, hundreds of celebrations are planned in…
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Get Ready for World Oceans Day 2017!
The Ocean Project promotes and coordinates World Oceans Day as a unique opportunity to celebrate our ocean and its life, and engage people in positive and empowering ways. The theme for World Oceans Day 2017 is "Our Oceans, Our Future," with a conservation action focus on encouraging solutions to plastic pollution and preventing marine litter for a healthier ocean and a better future. Get ready for World Oceans Day with updated free resources and event ideas for 2017. New promotional materials include posters available in 15 languages, graphics for social media, videos, and more! We have also teamed up again this year with The Octonauts to support you in celebrating in engaging ways for World Oceans Day. The updated Octonauts kit for 2017 includes graphics and activities that will help make your celebration more fun than ever! Looking for ideas for your World Oceans Day celebration? Check out the event planning guide for dozens of event and activity ideas and information, from art exhibits and festivals to races and contests. Head over to the World Oceans Day blog for even more event ideas updated regularly. Do you already know how you or your organization will be celebrating this year? Submit your event to the world map! The World Oceans Day site serves as a central coordinating platform for World Oceans Day, with new free resources each year and inspiring ideas for everyone – no matter where you live – to help expand the reach and impact of World Oceans Day on June 8, and continue year-round. Check the website frequently and sign up for the newsletter for updates!
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Youth Making Waves for Ocean Conservation
2016 brought a variety of challenges and triumphs for our oceans. While the world faced the hottest year on record and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef suffered from its largest coral bleaching event, we were still able to celebrate the establishment of the largest marine protected areas on earth in Hawaii and Antarctica, and cities and countries around the world put disposable plastic bag bans in place. As 2017 begins, there are still many goals to be met towards a healthier ocean. With high expectations to continue the trend of protecting ocean spaces and decreasing plastic use, there is still a need to fill a major gap in these processes: creating opportunities for youth engagement. With youth ages 24 and younger making up nearly 40% of the world’s population, it is imperative that we involve young people in creating a movement for a healthier ocean. This past year, The Ocean Project prioritized youth engagement and youth leadership development in a few ways. We launched the collaborative campaign, Sea Youth Rise Up, and created the World Oceans Day Youth Advisory Council. We created the Council to expand the reach and impact of World Oceans Day not only on June 8th, but also year round. From dozens of applications, 11 youth were chosen from around the globe. This bright and diverse group of young people, ages 14-22, come from a variety of backgrounds and educations. They come together with unique sets of concerns and a passion for protecting our oceans. Among other things, the Council members helped decide the winner of the third annual World Oceans Day Photo Contest and also wrote a series of blog posts for the World Oceans Day website. In their blog posts, the Council members share stories of ocean issues which matter most to them, and their motivations for joining the Council. In 2017, we will be looking to significantly expand our youth initiatives, with the collaborative development of Sea Youth Rise Up and expanding the scope of activities with the World Oceans Day Youth Advisory Council. The Council will be furthering their involvement through helping us develop culturally appropriate information and materials in multiple languages and collaborating with us to create a global alliance of youth for our ocean, including tweens, teens, university-age students and other millennials. If you or your organization know young people who would like to get involved in World Oceans Day, subscribe to the World Oceans Day newsletter to learn more. We are excited to work with our partners to enable more youth take action for a healthy ocean, and together create a better future for us all. Click on the names below to read each Council member's blog post from the Youth Making Waves series. Kevwe, Nigeria Melati, Indonesia Eugenia, Portugal Brandon, Curaçao Gabriella, Canada Mohammed, Morocco Caitlin, Australia Sang Jin, Germany La Tisha, Trinidad & Tobago Baylee, United States
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ISG+ Final Report: Philadelphia Zoo visitors say an overwhelming yes to “Saving Energy to Save Wildlife!”
After almost a year of testing and active recruitment for our study, we’ve been learning a lot about how to engage visitors on the issue of Saving Energy to Save Wildlife! We have been humbled by our visitor's trust in us and wowed by their willingness to pledge to reduce their household energy use. Last year, with the generous grant from The Ocean Project, we set out to test whether onsite messaging can affect offsite behavioral change. Using NNOCCI (National Network of Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation) framing methods, we constructed a short activity that invites our visitor to learn about ocean acidification. The message and activity were constructed to engage intergenerational audiences – the children and their adult chaperones. As one interpreter engages with the child through play and pledging, the other interpreter speaks to the adult about ocean acidification and participating in our study to measure their household energy usage. If they are PECO customers, they sign a consent form allowing us to track their energy usage for a year. While circumstances outside of our control (e.g. finessing legal details, losing our contact person) have stretched out the project for longer than the original 12-months – and we are still waiting on final numbers – we are going to share some thoughts and onsite results if you should consider doing the same project at your institution. 1. High interest in opportunity to act As indicated in our last blog, our pledging (to reduce household energy consumption) rate was high, especially after we adapted our approach to foreground the “ask” and add a second staffer so one could engage the younger audience while the other recruited the adults (parents/guardians). While visitors are easily distracted by the charismatic animals that are all around us, those who remained were very likely to have someone in their group pledge their commitment to taking conservation action at home. Approximately 3 of every 4 groups who engaged with our staff were willing to pledge! Moreover, we found that visitors reacted very positively, and were pleased at the opportunity to participate. and few of them balked at the ask, which brings us to the next point… Our advice to other zoos and aquariums: If you’re worried about asking your visitors to take conservation action, don’t. As The Ocean Project and so many other studies have consistently provided clear evidence for, visitors DO NOT consider it a chore that you are asking them to take conservation action. 2. Zoo visitors are willing to back up their pledge In addition to pledging to take action, 54.3% of those who were asked to participate in the tracking study responded positively. This was a very pleasant surprise for us as we were not sure how willing zoo visitors would be to let us track their household energy usage. More than half of our visitors were willing to let us study the trend in their energy consumption. While there were some visitors who did ask our researchers for clarification, most of our visitors were ready and willing to participate. Figure 1: More than half of our intergenerational groups (consisting of at least one adult and a child) were willing to participate in the study Our advice to other zoos and aquariums: What has become clear for us as a result of this study (which is consistent with feedback we are receiving from other sources) is that our visitors want to do more. Oblige them. We were terrified that asking people for permission to track their household energy use would be too audacious, but the overall response has been positive. Trust that your visitors are ready to do even more than you suspect. 3. Biggest barrier to non-participation: different service providers Of the visitors who were interested in participating for the study, almost half (44.8%) were not eligible because they were not PECO customers. We collected a list of 17 service providers, but 4 primary providers – PSE&G, PPL, DelMarVa, and Atlantic City Electric – serviced almost three-quarters (74.4%) of our other interested (but not eligible) participants. We have always known that our visitors are diverse and come from the tri-state area, but now we know that they are also diverse in their electricity companies! This does suggest that a study such as this would work really well for an organization that has fewer providers in their market area. Figure 2: Almost as many people were interested in participating but were not eligible (not PECO consumers) Our advice to other zoos and aquariums: How many energy providers are there in your region? In the Philadelphia area, there were many providers by choice and by zipcode. To have a higher overall recruitment rate, you might want to consider setting up partnerships with the biggest providers in your region. If we had increased our partnership from 1 to 4, we could have doubled our number of participants. The greatest barrier to participation is not visitor interest but our lack of ability to support their interest. 4. Intensive project Throughout the six months, we engaged more than 1500 visitor groups to KidZooU’s coral reef tank. Of the 1327 groups with at least one adult that we spoke to, we had the opportunity to ask 641 (48.3%) of them if they were interested in participating project. Of those 641 groups, 348 (54.3%) said they were interested, and 293 (45.7%) were not interested. Our advice to other zoos and aquariums: This situation could be improved by addressing the number of providers you partner with, but there is no denying that this (at least in its current form) is a highly intensive project. But take the lessons that we have learnt and build on it instead of starting from scratch – such a preponderance of evidence already exists that our visitors want to take conservation action, we don’t need prove that repeatedly. If you should take on such a project, make sure to provide adequate support for your staff – it is a highly repetitive and tiring process for them. Have them out for short (1-2 hours) shifts; intersperse their sessions with other projects to provide variety; provide them with tasks that have more immediate positive feedback to keep their energy up. Conclusion Despite the intensive and tiring process, we are extremely glad we took on this project. We are glad that The Ocean Project’s Innovative Solutions Grants+ provided us with the opportunity to clearly demonstrate that our visitors are ready for bigger asks. Much bigger. As a result of this study, the Philadelphia Zoo is now examining the opportunities to expand this to other parts of our institution, focusing on scaling and learning how to deepen the impact. This framework and approach will be incorporated into our institutional operations. And now that we know our visitors are ready and willing to do what it takes to make a significant difference for wildlife, we are excited to embark on the next stage of the journey. Our take home message? Ask early and ask BIG. Don’t be shy.
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Advice from the Innovators: A summary of lessons learned in public engagement from year three of the Innovative Solutions Grants + Program (ISG+)
Our grantees from year three have completed their projects and submitted their final reports, which are filled with tips and lessons for other aquariums and zoos that share their interest in engaging visitors and advancing conservation. Many thanks to NOAA for making these grants possible. Per your request, we’ve compiled this summary of the top line takeaways. Links to their full reports with more detailed results, can be found below. Help your audiences turn inspiration into action! In other words, don’t just tell visitors what you are doing, invite them into the effort and document their support! Kirinne Slaughter, who led efforts under the grant to the Saint Louis Zoo, wrote in her final report, “our results confirmed The Ocean Project’s finding that (visitors) do indeed expect, trust, and appreciate the advice that you have to offer them on how they could become part of the plastic pollution solution…not only were our guests willing to sign a pledge (90% of those asked did so) but some were willing to share that pledge and stay invested on social media”. This finding was echoed by Wei Ying Wong of The Philadelphia Zoo, who reported that, “in addition to pledging to take action (to reduce their home energy use), 54% of those who were asked to participate in the tracking study (agreed to) let us track their household energy usage!” In a powerful presentation about her project at the AZA Annual Conference, Wei Ying could be heard wondering aloud if we are aiming too low with our conservation asks – these results certainly seem to suggest that! Seattle Youth CAN Empower youth to be conservation advocates. Instead of approaching youth as an audience for you to engage, ask youth to help you engage others, then hang on for the ride! Based on the experience of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Debbie Colodner strongly encouraged others to, “engage the power of young professionals or university students to help make the case,” which, in their case, was that, “millennial customers care about where their (seafood) comes from”. Kirinne at St. Louis Zoo also found this to be true, noting that, “one of the most exciting and successful parts of our campaigns was allowing the teens to experiment with the delivery of the #byetobags.” Notably, the team learned a lot not only about engaging visitors onsite, but, if you check out their final report also through social media, along with some bonus findings about the impact their onsite efforts had on guest behavior at their own gift shop. Eli Weiss of the Woodland Park Zoo shared similar advice, adding from his two years under the grant that “empowering youth leaders to develop public, and especially peer-to-peer, conservation engagement efforts is highly recommended and can lead to exciting new engagement strategies!” With one notable caveat, “that when teen leaders are developing public engagement efforts, their enthusiasm and ideas need focus to ensure successful implementation.” If you are interested in learning about youth engagement, look no further than the final report submitted by Eli and his partners at the Seattle Aquarium and Pacific Science Center. A group of TAYR congregation members during a community cleanup. Photo: National Aquarium Look beyond the impact you can have on individuals and consider community partnerships, especially when thinking of success at scale. Eli of Woodland Park noted that one of the primary lessons from their second year was to, “take the time to develop relationships with other organizations who have an overlapping interest in reaching youth and advancing conservation rather than doing it alone,” adding that, “zoos and aquariums can play a critical role in developing networks of youth conservation leaders, and in this electronic age don’t underestimate the power of in-person gatherings.” Debbie from the Desert Museum noted the incredibly positive response their project had from local restaurants, and advised others to, “work with interested chefs/owners to partner on strategies to build the local sustainable seafood (effort)”. If you’re interested in advancing sustainable seafood, or events that advance conservation, the full story of their efforts with local youth and local restaurants can be found here. Gabrielle Roffe and Curtis Bennett of the National Aquarium, who used a “pillar approach” to develop a truly inspirational partnership with their local community, advised, “take the time to familiarize yourself with the community, in both the physical and social sense (and) remember that building trusting community relationships is a two-way street. You have to get to know the community but you also have to give the community time to get to know you… from there focus on opportunities to create mutually beneficial goals in order to create a collaborative effort.” For anyone interested in community engagement, their final post is a must read! Our research tells us that when doing public engagement, start by giving your audience the solutions and then dive deeper into the details. So, audience, if you’re now inspired to go deeper, here are all of the links to their reports! Participants at Fini's Landing celebration of World Oceans Day Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum: Awarded $20,000 to engage university students in Tasting Sustainability, a community-based conservation initiative on the issue of seafood sustainability. Initial post Midterm post Final post TAYR Youth Group at a debris cleanup at Masonville CoveNational Aquarium: Awarded $25,000 for a project that engages the Hispanic community in a small Baltimore watershed on the issue of marine debris. Initial post Midterm post Final post Saint Louis Zoo: Awarded $15,000 to launch a project directed predominantly by teen volunteers on site and via social media with an emphasis on reducing the use of single-use plastic bags. Initial post Midterm post Final post Youth leaders on stage Woodland Park Zoo: Awarded a second year of funding, at $30,000 to expand their leadership role with Seattle Youth Climate Action Network (CAN), an evolution of Woodland Park Zoo, Seattle Aquarium and Pacific Science Center youth programs. Initial post (Transition between years) Midterm post Final post
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The Trump Administration: The Opportunity for Aquariums and Zoos
The optimist in me always looks for new opportunities that are presented with the changes that come after an election – and that is no different following the election of Donald Trump. Based on comments made before and after the election, I expect a rancorous debate between industry and conservative think tanks, and environmental groups and liberal think tanks on environmental laws and regulations. The new administration’s likely agenda will include reducing environmental regulations under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts; increasing fishing, mining, logging, ranching and oil and gas exploration in public waters and on public and private lands; repealing the Antiquities Act, which every President since Teddy Roosevelt has used to protect America’s treasures; and reversing commitments made by President Obama to address climate change. It will likely impact the reauthorization or renewal of existing laws such as the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, or the Farm Bill. So…what role can aquariums and zoos play? An important one! Many of the same people will be making the same arguments about the same issues. Now more than ever there is a need for new voices, specifically sources of information that base their opinions on an objective analysis of available scientific information. This type of science-based work is exactly what aquariums and zoos do every day to care for animals, advance their survival in the wild, and engage visitors and the public for conservation. And it is exactly why you are so respected by your guests and neighbors. Additionally, your audience is likely more like America than any other conservation constituency. You can break through the social media silos and mainstream media silos and speak directly to people who trust you as a non-partisan, objective, and rational voice. The data is clear that when visiting an aquarium or a zoo, your visitors expect, trust, and appreciate information about conservation and how to help with solutions. In addition, “walking the talk” as an institution resonates with audiences, especially when visitors and members are positioned as part of the effort in a “together we can” approach that also helps get to the scale necessary to effect change. I began my career on Capitol Hill in 1987 and have been engaged in conservation ever since. What drew me to work with zoos and aquariums in 2004 is the incredible platform you have to inform the discussion and advance conservation in meaningful ways -- a dozen years later that opportunity still exists and is needed now more than ever. And as you do so, know that The Ocean Project continues to grow its policy advocacy capacity, and we stand ready to help you craft messages and develop approaches that are both strategic and effective. The space in these debates for aquariums and zoos includes translating the best available science into an objective recommendation versus using political science to shape natural science to achieve a policy objective. Your guests and neighbors trust you and look to your guidance on how to help with conservation issues. You have real opportunities to communicate at the local level through your platforms and channels while engaging in timely and coordinated actions on national policy issues. How you do it without a political backlash is simple – stick to the facts and use the data. For example, institutions engaged in conservation programs to protect endangered or threatened species, such as the SAFE campaign, can objectively analyze the available science to make informed decisions. That skill set can be transferred to policy debates with the simple preface such as: “As a science-based institution we’ve reviewed the available science and data and have concluded…” Much of the media coverage will be of the horse race regarding who is winning and losing, but what will fly under the radar of this coverage is that the science each side cites to support their cause will be cherry-picked, biased, or both. The two sides and many of their supporters in Washington will talk past and over each other, people near you will wonder what has changed and be open to objective information from sources they can trust. Since becoming The Ocean Project’s Policy Advisor just over two years ago, we’ve worked on several projects allowing aquariums and zoos to voice support for appropriations related to environmental education at NOAA and EPA and also the creation and expansion of marine protected areas in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. What I learned from these advocacy actions (from simple letter sign-ons to youth initiatives like Sea Youth Rise Up to fully implemented onsite visitor engagement campaign) was that aquariums and zoos want to be active in visible ways – and that may be needed now more than ever. You have an opportunity to leverage your unique position as a valuable community asset and valued community institution. As The Ocean Project builds out our policy program in support of and in partnership with aquariums and zoos, we hope you consider joining us, as we collaborate with others such as AZA and ACP, in future actions. If you are interested in doing so, please contact us. Learn more about Tom Adams and our team here.
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The Houston Zoo Explores Whether Artistic Displays Inspire Conservation Action!
This guest post is by Martha Parker, Conservation Impact Manager at The Houston Zoo. The Houston Zoo is committed to saving wildlife through partnerships and the support of global and local conservation projects, while connecting the Houston community to wildlife at the Zoo and inspiring them to action. To help fulfill our goal of saving wildlife, the Houston Zoo has been addressing the issue of plastic pollution. We went plastic bag free in July 2015, a decision that helped reinforce our commitment to reducing plastic pollution, a major threat for marine wildlife like sea turtles, which we work diligently to protect. The Houston Zoo receives wild sea turtles who require medical care and rehabilitation support from our partners at NOAA. Some of these turtles arrive at the Houston Zoo because they have ingested plastics or are entangled in marine debris. This makes the connection between the wildlife we work to protect and the threat of marine debris quite clear for us. The Approach To further our protection efforts of local sea turtles and help connect our community to the threat of marine debris and how they could take action, we welcomed Washed Ashore to the Zoo in January of 2016. Displayed at the Zoo’s Brown Education Center, Washed Ashore was the perfect visual representation of a global issue that hits home for Houstonians living so close to the Gulf of Mexico: plastic pollution. This awe-inspiring exhibit brings to life an overwhelming problem and puts it right in front of your eyes, connecting visitors with the animals affected by trash in our oceans. The Houston Zoo not only wanted to provide a fun experience for their guests, but also wanted to inspire action to save animals in the wild with a very specific ask of going single-use plastic bag free when shopping. After some brainstorming for a fun, interactive guest experience that incorporated data collection, Zoo staff decided the best way to get guests to take a pledge to use reusable bags was to have them add their fingerprint to another artistic display, an underwater-themed mural, designed and painted by famous Houston street artist, Gonzo247. Before participating, however, guests took a short survey and committed to going plastic bag free for three months. Between January and April 2016, colorful sea turtles, sharks, rays, shore birds, and fish were filled in as 1,482 guests took the pledge and showed their commitment by adding their thumbprint to the mural wall, in the animal they were helping to protect by going plastic bag free. This challenge is important to the Zoo’s mission of saving animals in the wild and inspiring behavior change by empowering Houstonians to make a difference. But how do we know if it worked? The Results With our evaluation methods, we aimed to answer the question; do visitors to the Washed Ashore exhibit at the Houston Zoo become inspired to use reusable bags more frequently than those zoo visitors who did not? We asked visitors from both a control group and an intervention group to take the challenge to go plastic bag free for 3 months to save wildlife like sea turtles. The control group was asked this question at the sea lion exhibit before Washed Ashore opened. The intervention group included those zoo visitors who visited the Washed Ashore exhibit. Three months from the time the visitor signed up to go plastic bag free, the Houston Zoo followed up with them by email to see how they did with the challenge. In total, we had 68 participants in our control group, with only 6% responding to the 3-month follow up. Our intervention group included 1,482 participants, and we had a notably better 16% response rate, with 230 of those responded to the 3-month follow up. While the better response rate was a good indication of a positive impact from the exhibit, we did not have enough participants in our control group to answer our original research question. We did gather valuable data that we can use to influence future exhibits and messaging. For example, we confirmed that in keeping with research by The Ocean Project and others, our guests are indeed motivated to make changes in their behaviors to protect animals, and their visit to the Zoo was an important aspect of taking action. Specific to using reusable bags, we know that our messaging should include ways to remember your bags, including tips on keeping them in your car. Finally, it was a great learning experience for the Zoo to evaluate (on a small scale), the impact of our work to save wildlife by empowering our community to take action. What enabled us to be successful in our effort to connect guests to the issue of marine debris and move them to action was the collaboration across numerous departments of the Zoo, and the strong tie between the exhibit and our efforts to save ocean animals like sea turtles, locally. This project has certainly influenced the way we think and plan for future exhibits and experiences. Our advice to others…... Start planning early. Get all relevant departments/people involved so that you choose the correct exhibit for your audience. Develop an institutional goal. No matter the exhibit content, you should have an institutional goal for that exhibit determined so that planning and evaluations can take that goal into consideration. Revisit the exhibit/process at regular intervals. Avoid implementing a project and then when finished, evaluating how it went. Bring all stakeholders together frequently to see how the project is going and make changes as you go. Align messaging/content with what is relevant for your institution, your audience, and the work you do. Communicate with other organizations who have experience with the content/exhibit-find out what worked for them, what didn’t. Track your success-even seeing what didn’t work is critical information to move forward in the future Additional Data Responses from both groups in 3-month follow-up included some positive indications that we were helping to increase bag use: 43.35% of respondents used their bags “almost every time they shopped” during the 3-month challenge, compared to 16.31% of respondents used their bags “every time they shopped” during the 3-month challenge, and only 2.58% of respondents “never” used their bags when they shopped during the 3-month challenge More than 60% of survey respondents put their likelihood of continuing to use reusable bags at “extremely likely” 198 respondents have encouraged family/friends to go plastic bag free as a result of their participation in the challenge, reaching an additional ~1,379 people. It was important for the Zoo to understand the motivations behind why our guests were successful in the reusable bag challenge. We found that motivations for continuing to use reusable bags during 3-month challenge included the following: Visiting the Zoo increased knowledge of how plastic bags are a problem for wildlife was cited by more than 52% of survey respondents. “That exhibit at the zoo really did change things for me. Not just about plastic bags. I have tried to buy less plastic in general - kids dishes and bowls (switched to bamboo), kids toys (wood, fabric, handmade), and I've tried to avoid buying food that comes with a lot of extra packaging. I loved that exhibit because it shocked me to see all of the toys and bottles and things that don't just disappear, thank you for teaching me that I'm contributing even if I think I'm not!” “I have used reusable bags for many years. Mostly at the grocery store. The positive thing in my life about the challenge was not taking bags at other stores such as clothing or craft stores. Taking the challenge actually made me take my reusable bag to the next level, which is to use them everywhere including on trips.” In order to make the Zoo’s messaging more effective in the future, we also asked respondents about barriers, which included remembering their bags. 80% of respondents remembered their reusable bags by keeping them in their car. In the future, we can utilize this information to remove barriers for guests when we ask them to switch to reusable bags. (E.g. “If I forgot my bags at home, I would ask for paper, which got reused. If I forgot my bags in the car, I would just ask them not to bag my groceries and then would cart them out and put them in the bags once I got to the car. It really helped me remember to take them out of the car when I had to do this!”) Additional feedback from Houston Zoo participants: ~Great program to encourage less plastic bag use, thank you! ~I have been using only recyclable bags, mostly fabric, for more than 5 years. I was happy to see the bag challenge at the zoo! I hope you have had an excellent response from others. ~I tell the store clerks about our pledge with the zoo and encourage family to think about using reusable bags. ~The bag challenge did not work for me. I chose to reduce my use of disposable plastic bottles instead. I now have a metal water bottle and have encouraged my children to use reusable water bottles also. ~Great program. The education by the zoo raises our awareness to the damage of plastic bags. Continued education and awareness remind us and help us change our ways permanently. Thank you for all of your hard work! ~This was not easy at first! A few times I forgot my bags in the car and had to take a full cart of groceries out to the car and load them in my reusable bags in the parking lot. Ha! But it was worth it, to know that I helped. Thank you for the challenge! ~This survey is a test reminder to get back on track with using reusable bags! ~Going shopping with reusable bags is fun and fashionable. I use them where ever I shop or visit! The zoo bags are the best. I have 3 of them so far. Please design more! ~I now also recycle all my paper and plastics. Thanks to my Houston zoo visit. Was very impressed with your plastic artwork. ~I have shared this incentive through Facebook by posting photos of the zoo's exhibit and the impact on not only sea turtles, but other sea creatures as well. When I use plastic bags, I always bring them back for recycling, and never throw them in the trash. The exhibit at Houston Zoo changed my behavior absolutely, I had no idea the impact of such a simple, daily use item on wildlife. Thank you! ~It was a great experience and if it had not been for that visit at the Zoo with my grandson, I would still be using plastic bags. Now I find that it is actually so much more efficient to use my own reusable bags, because more items fit into the bag, or maybe the store packers put more into one bag. Therefore, it is also more convenient to carry it into the house. Helping to save the environment is great. Keep up with such programs. Thanks. ~I often forgot my reusable bag but I would still carry out the items rather than asking for a plastic bag. When questioned or given that unsure look by my cashier, I often responded with "I'm plastic bag free, save a sea turtle". At least twice I was asked what I meant and was able to have a short but great conversation about the subject.
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The results are in! SEA LIFE Trust and SEA LIFE Aquariums vote for Marine Protected Areas
Based on a successful pilot, the SEA LIFE Trust and SEA LIFE Aquariums in partnership with The Ocean Project rolled out an effort to engage visitors at all of our American aquariums on the issue of marine protected areas. The pilot gave us confidence! It confirmed that our visitors expect, trust and appreciate information from aquariums about how to help the ocean and its animals, and that they especially liked the opportunity to “vote” in favor of expanding our nation’s network of marine protected areas. Marine Protected Area Ballot The pilot identified an opportunity. We realized that by engaging our visitors and documenting their opinions on this issue, we could give every-day Americans a voice in a discussion that otherwise might be dominated by special interests. This was a role that among all the conservation organizations working on this issue, we were best equipped to do. So we took our initial idea as piloted, and revised it slightly. Rather than asking our visitors a simple yes/no question about their support for marine protected areas, we asked them to choose among four sites we knew to be currently under consideration, while also providing an opportunity to answer with all or none of the above. And we developed a web site to reach those beyond our gates: Our Blue Backyard. Thank you President Obama! Our eight sites collected nearly 30,000 votes in six weeks and diligently counted them all! Yet again our visitors showed that they were strongly supportive of expanding our nation’s network of marine protected areas, with 97% voting in favor of adding one or more sites, and “all of the above” receiving the highest number of votes. And while we did not do another set of exit surveys, the anecdotal feedback from the visitors was also overwhelmingly positive. Most important, we were able to share these views with national leaders at a critical time, right as President Obama was deciding to expand the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument off the coast of Hawaii, and create the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. If you would have told me just a few months ago that by the end of our effort two of the four areas would be protected, I’m not sure I would have believed it, but yet that is exactly what happened! We were able to thank our visitors for joining us in support, and then on behalf of our visitors reach out to thank the President. Engaging our visitors, asking them to participate, and documenting their opinons is certainly an approach that worked well! We also, however, learned some valuable lessons along the way about how best to do so. We were reminded of the power of the on-site visit, and the way that inspires guests to want to help animals. We just need to provide them with an easy way to turn that inspiration into action! We saw the benefits of having a relatively simple and straightforward engagement strategy best exemplified by the initial yes/no voting exercise. While some of our visitors wanted to know more about the specific sites being considered, many more simply wanted to express their support for conservation. While many of us “old timers” at aquariums and zoos think about our impact on the indiviudual visitor, we found here a great example of what can be done when taking a more systemic view about how we could help bring the collective opinion of our vistiors to the attention of our national leaders. And we noted that it was best to be flexible in our approaches. For example, we began thinking it would be more efficient and effective to engage guests at ticketing, but most of our aquariums, including the one with the best results (SEA LIFE Arizona Aquairum) found that it was far better to create a separate space. Although it would have required additonal effort, looking back it would have been nice to have done the exit surveys not just for the pilot but for the full campaign, as those exit surveys so strongly suggested that by engaging visitors and aksing them to participate, we also helped increase their sense that together we can solve these problems, as well as their understanding of the improtant role aquariums and zoos can play in advancing conservation. The biggest takeaway of all was that we can, and in my view should be doing more together with our visitors to help advance conservation – it truly is a win-win. And with that, I am already excited about our next effort. This guest post was submitted by Chris Andrews, Head of Animal Welfare and Development at SEA LIFE Aquariums in the US.
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ISG+ Final Report: Seattle Youth Climate Action Network is Looking Back and Planning Ahead!
This guest post by Eli Weiss of Woodland Park Zoo is the last in a 3-part series on their Innovative Solutions Grants+ project, exploring how teens in the Seattle area can empower each other and their peers for action on climate change. When the idea of Seattle Youth Climate Action Network was hatched in the fall of 2014, inspired by conversations with teens in Woodland Park Zoo’s ZooCorps program, we were looking for a new approach to engage local youth in the zoo’s mission and connect the dots between “learn…care…act,” and decided to apply one of the major lessons from the research by The Ocean Project: youth already care and want to turn their concern into action! With two years of support from the Innovative Solutions Grants+ Program, hundreds of teens have participated in the project, and together we have developed and tested a pilot campaign while creating and refining an innovative local network approach that has great potential for continued local growth. In fact, our experiment has blossomed into something that our institutions and local community value as a new approach to regional youth climate engagement, and we believe could serve as a model for other regions across the country! As mentioned in our last post, our goals for this past year have been to: Expand the networks reach locally through outreach and more inclusive programing, and Build on our initial successes with the Summer Transportation Challenge and Youth Climate Action Summit. Let me reflect on our successes and lessons learned for each of these goals as we wrap up our work under this grant. Growing the Network Face of Climate Action We have seen great interest in Seattle Youth CAN, and under this grant cycle alone more than 400 teens have signed up to get network updates and over 200 youth have attended one or more events since January 2016. For us this has been a great sign that there is a growing interest in Seattle Youth CAN among local teens. While some have heard about the network from peers or through other direct outreach efforts with which we have experimented, including tabling at events and broader social media presence including facebook, instagram, and twitter (See also our last post), our most successful approach was to identify and work with other youth programs where we had overlapping interests. Echoing a finding from our ISG+ peers at the National Aquarium, we learned that these relationships take time, but they are well worth the effort. We have been working with a range of community groups and agencies, many of who are eager to deepen our partnership through this project. For some groups there was immediate interest, while others took time to find the right opportunity for collaboration. An example of the latter is the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps, an environmental youth development program in SW Seattle that we have been encouraging to join the network since our 2015 summit. This year, we had more than 20 of their youth attend our summit! Another relationship that we are excited about is with the University of Washington College of the Environment, a partnership that came about because our youth have expressed interest in increasing our focus on exploring climate related career pathways, so this past summer we co-hosted a college career panel at the UW that was attended by 50 teens and the College in turn also participated in our recent Summit. Our advice to other zoos and aquariums? Take the time to develop relationships with other organizations who have an overlapping interest in reaching youth and advancing conservation rather than doing it alone. An Ongoing Commitment to Youth Leadership The creation of a Youth Leadership Committee, made up of teen leads from the zoo, aquarium, and science center - has worked out especially well. The Committee helps to make significant decisions about the direction of the project and the focus of action campaigns and events this past year. We feel confident that Seattle Youth CAN’s current direction reflects the needs and interests of Seattle-area youth. Since our launch, we have looked to our youth leaders to make major decisions impacting the focus of the network including: types of projects, the design and focus of action campaigns, and how we communicate with teens in the network. In turning over decision making to our youth leaders, we have learned that there is a fine balance between supporting youth driven ideas and having the capacity to help them be successful in their plans as I’ll describe below. Our advice to others? Empowering youth leaders to develop public, and especially peer-to-peer, conservation engagement efforts is highly recommended and can lead to exciting new engagement strategies! Youth leaders Lessons from the Transportation Challenge 2.0 For the 2016 Summer Transportation Challenge, we let our youth leaders develop the plan, which included an ambitious, and, in hindsight, overly ambitious, eight-week campaign with weekly events and social media challenges aimed at engaging other teens in fun activities and events that helped increase personal action and carbon reducing transportation choices. It all seemed great when our youth leaders formed their plans in the spring, but by mid-summer we realized that many of them didn’t have as much time as we anticipated amidst busy summer obligations to fully support the challenge. This meant that our staff were tasked with carrying out much of what was set in motion by our youth leaders. We were expecting that an increase in the frequency of events and the length of the challenge as compared to last year would lead to many more teens getting involved. The challenge ended up with some bright spots but fell short of those expectations. The biggest bright spots were that the challenge had a positive impact on participants (See for example Masayuki’s blog post) and the environment, with more than 90 teens attending summer events and challenge participants logging 7,513 miles of not driven alone, which equals 3,214 pounds of CO2 saved. In addition, the continued transportation focus allowed us to expand on our partnership with a key partner, King County Metro Transit, and our teen leaders worked with the agency to develop messaging, including this video, to encourage youth to utilize public transit and make the connection between riding the bus and fighting climate change. As for what didn’t work, we learned that having events during the week made it hard for some teens to attend given other obligations. We were also surprised that the weekly social media contests did not lead to more participation, and how some teens in the network, even though they had developed the ideas, were not interested in posting challenge related things on their own social media channels. Lastly, we are rethinking the timing of the transportation challenge in our calendar of events, and our teen leaders are already talking about focusing on the school year, rather than the summer, in 2017, when student schedules are more predictable. And, of course, we learned that with limited time and resources, we realized the need to either limit plans or add staff to support the ambition and growth of our youth leadership and the action campaigns and events that they develop. Our advice to others? We learned that when teen leaders are developing public engagement efforts, their enthusiasm and ideas need focus to ensure successful implementation Summit Success On October 2, Woodland Park Zoo hosted the 2nd Annual Youth Climate Action Summit and brought together 100 Seattle-area teens interested in fighting climate change and more than 20 climate focused community leaders. This culminating full day event was organized and led by eleven youth leaders and Woodland Park Zoo staff. And learning one of our own lessons from the Transportation Challenge, we were sure to create clear and realistic expectations for youth leadership, which lead to an event that maintained a very youth driven feel, while having enough staff support to make it all come together and run smoothly. Youth leaders on stage Youth who participated in the dynamic day of learning and action attend 39 local schools and a range of youth programs, and for 70% of attendees it was their first Seattle Youth CAN event. Having such a diverse group of youth in attendance was a direct result of both peer to peer outreach and, in particular, our newly formed partnerships with other local environmentally focused youth programs including those already mentioned above as well as Seward Park Audubon Center and YMCA Earth Service Corps. Over the past year, we have seen Seattle Youth CAN expand from the original participants, teens already involved in programs at the zoo, aquarium, and science center, to a much broader group of youth leaders who were not already connected to one of these three institutions. This growth is exciting and through our ongoing refinement of the network we believe that the number of youth leaders participating will continue to increase in years to come. Another indicator of success for the summit and other events is that teens are having a good time and building community. Read, for example, Katherine’s recent blog post on how Seattle Youth CAN is creating a positive and fun space for teens to take climate action. An “Action Fair" was a new addition to summit this year worth mentioning, which crated a dynamic forum for youth participants and climate focused community groups to dialogue though activities at an outdoor tabling event. Participating groups included University of Washington, Earth Games, Carbon Washington, Sierra Club, Solar Washington, Plant for the Planet, Our Children’s Trust, and 350.org Seattle. For many of these groups it was the first opportunity to interact with teens from Seattle Youth CAN and we have already begun exploring how we can work more closely with some of them in 2017. Check out the full schedule for more details on workshops, presenters, and participating community groups. Our advice to others? Zoos and aquariums can play a critical role in developing networks of youth conservation leaders, and in this electronic age don’t underestimate the power of in-person gatherings Measuring our Impact We hoped that teens who participated in Seattle Youth CAN this past year would not only (1) Increase their understanding of the issue, but (2) increase participation in actions to fight climate change, and (3) that youth leaders would develop measurable leadership skills. Although our audience research team is still hard at work evaluating results from our 2016 programs, we have seen positive trends from an initial review of pre and post survey results and participant interviews to feel confident that Seattle Youth CAN is having a positive impact in these three areas. Stay tuned for a follow up report in late 2016. Making the mountain Group with mountain Next Steps In 2017, we are planning to form a Community Advisory Committee to ensure that we have broad support and diverse input from all of the community collaborators with whom we’ve connected over the past two years. To help with youth leadership, we are planning to add a paid youth climate fellowship opportunity, to build on the youth driven spirit of the project. Also, in an effort to help reach all youth in our region, we plan to conduct focus groups this winter with teens throughout the metropolitan area. We are grateful for the past two years of funding from The Ocean Project’s Innovative Solutions Grants+ program, as it has allowed us to pilot this new model for local youth climate networks. We have truly valued the ongoing support and coaching from The Ocean Project’s staff and have also appreciated connecting with other recipients of the ISG+ program. We are committed to the future evolution of this work and are excited to continue to share what we’ve learned with other institutions and communities across the countries who are interested in launching their own network or youth climate action project. If you would like to explore the idea of starting a youth climate action network in your region or are already working on a youth climate project and want to connect, please get in touch! Seattleyouthcan@zoo.org
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ISG+ Final Report: Tasting Success at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum
This guest post is submitted by Debbie Colodner, Director of Conservation Education and Science from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and is the last in a 3-part series on their Innovative Solutions Grants+ project where they partnered with Leading for Good to see if they can move the needle on sustainable seafood in Tucson, Arizona. With Tasting Sustainability, our effort under the Innovative Solutions Grants + Program, we wanted to go beyond Desert Museum business as usual. We understood that in order to make a difference for sustainable seafood in our desert city, we needed to go beyond efforts to raise awareness and get closer to the point of sale, particularly at restaurants. And we hypothesized that there could be a win-win in promoting sustainable seafood by reaching out to local restaurants and engaging millennial audiences. We were right! Moreover, this effort has built our confidence and capacity to go outside of our comfort zone and begin a social marketing initiative. Working with our partner in this effort, Lead Local and their Leading for Good program, our Museum staff and interns alike had opportunities to learn about how to research an audience’s interests (In this case, local restaurants’ needs, wants and constraints), as well as inexpensive and rapid methods to prototype engagement ideas. SINCE OUR LAST POST As described in our last blog post, the strategy we chose for further testing was to co-host events with local restaurants, and we were able to test three different types of events last Spring. The first was at a downtown restaurant, in concert with “Agave Week,” which is focused on agave-derived and other native and local food products. The event attracted a large, diverse crowd, and our project interns encouraged people to take a seafood watch guide, take a pledge (using a photoframe cutout) and post it to social media. Our major lesson learned was that without food/beverage samples to offer it was hard to get this audience’s attention, especially at an event with a different theme, and interns were able to distribute 30+ guides, and only 6 people took a pledge. Nonetheless, the interns enjoyed the chance to raise awareness and participate in this locally grown and growing festival, and felt like they made an impact (awareness) on the people with whom they spoke. The second event was at a more “suburban” beach-themed restaurant which is already a Seafood Watch partner. The restaurant owner acknowledged an “aha” moment when he realized that there is value in promoting that partnership to attract younger customers. He bought all new uniforms for his wait staff – t-shirts promoting sustainable seafood. The event drew more customers than usual for a Friday night in the slow season, making it a success for the restaurant. And at this event, staff from the Museum and Monterey Bay’s Seafood Watch program staffed an educational table with interactive displays outside of the restaurant. Everyone entering the restaurant saw the display materials, and most stopped to talk - in contrast to the Agave Fest, the sustainable seafood messaging was the focus in event advertising, and that helped engagement. But most of the diners were older adults, many from the Museum’s docent and volunteer corps, so still an ongoing challenge in reaching younger adults. Karin Stratton from Monterey Bay's Seafood Watch Program with participants at Fini's World Oceans Day Event, demonstrating Fini's new tee shirts for wait staff and for purchase. The third event was “World Oceans Night” at the Desert Museum. Based on the connections forged by our Interns, two new restaurants were able to attend and promote their sustainable choices, along with several non-restaurant community partners – a trend we hope to continue. Restaurant participants were pleased, indicating that with a crowd filled with many millennial-aged adults among the 900 people who attended, they would like to come again next year and that they would like to continue to partner on sustainable seafood issues, including moving toward becoming a Seafood Watch partner (for two of them). Anecdotally, we can say again that developing a seafood themed event was helpful, and with a push we did better in terms of attracting a millennial audience; however, next time we will look to have better systems in place to track engagement and the ages of those attending. Throughout this effort we’ve had great response from the local restaurants – nearly all we asked were interested in working with us on this issue, including in developing these events. And our experience suggested that the chefs were the key people with whom to work. However, our research with the restaurants and our experience at these events revealed that local awareness of sustainable seafood has not yet reached the threshold above which it would be valuable for the restaurants to tout their commitments. Somewhat ironic given that we started this project with the proposition that we needed to do more than awareness-raising! And, again, we now know that there are several restaurants in the Tucson area who see benefit in helping the Museum build this awareness, even if they are not ready to become full Seafood Watch partners. The other major goal of the project was to enhance the Museum’s engagement with younger adults (millennials), and to empower young adults to make positive change in their communities. At the start of the project, 3 of the 7 interns involved reported that they were unsure they could do anything to impact ocean health and fish populations. In the final survey, 100% of responding interns were sure they knew what they could do to make a difference! And while initial surveys revealed that most interns viewed the museum as a beautiful place to see desert wildlife, at the conclusion, one participant called the Desert Museum “a leader in conservation and collaboration to connect the community with the natural world.” We also learned that college students can be persuasive and engaging spokespeople for more sustainable seafood promotion at restaurants, and that projects like this help them develop skills for making positive change in their communities. OUR ADVICE TO OTHERS So in summary, here are some lessons for other zoos and aquariums that may want to advance sustainable seafood: Engage the power of young professionals or university students to help make the case that millennial customers care about where their food comes from Reach out to local restaurants, interview chefs and owners to gauge their awareness and interest Work with interested chefs/owners to partner on strategies to build the local sustainable seafood brand Recognize their interest and steps toward seafood sustainability, even if they may be short of full Seafood Watch partnership Encourage restaurants to promote their sustainable seafood choices more boldly, and explore opportunities for mutually beneficial events (noting that the public may not yet be aware!) Help create a network of local chefs/restaurant owners Next steps for Tasting Sustainability THIS IS NOT THE END! The Museum’s next steps in Tasting Sustainability are to further connect local Seafood Watch partners and potential partners with additional coordinated events at restaurants, and by making the network visible through the ASDM website and at our new Stingray Touch exhibit. And continue to focus on collaborating with the millennials! We will continue our efforts to put Tucson on the map as a fish friendly city and establish a model for other cities to follow.
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