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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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ISG+ Final Report: Connecting Ocean Conservation and Community Engagement at the National Aquarium

This guest post, by Gabrielle Roffe and Curtis Bennett of the National Aquarium’s Conservation Department is the last in a 3-part series on their Innovative Solutions Grants+ project. This project has addressed the issue of marine debris by implementing a new approach to community engagement, with a specific focus on building our connection with the Hispanic communities near Masonville Cove in the Chesapeake Bay. Summary This past year, as part of The Ocean Project’s Innovative Solutions Grant+ (ISG+) Program, the National Aquarium has been trying a new approach to engage the Hispanic community throughout the South Baltimore neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Curtis Bay near Masonville Cove, the Nation’s first Urban Wildlife Refuge. The National Aquarium recognizes the value of providing opportunities for a diversity of students and community members to participate in conservation efforts, and has prioritized urban conservation efforts. The goal of these community outreach efforts is to not only improve the health of the neighborhoods and the watershed but to strengthen the community’s connection to their local environment. While the National Aquarium’s earlier community engagement projects had been successful, we recognized that we were not doing as well with the Hispanic community, a growing demographic within our target neighborhoods. Thus, we developed this project focused specifically on creating new and innovative ways to engage Hispanic communities on an issue we knew from prior research was a common concern: marine debris. The goals of this project were twofold: 1) Engage members of the Hispanic community in the removal of debris 2) Cultivate community champions in order to ensure ongoing engagement In order to successfully meet these goals, we had to develop a new and innovative approach to outreach, one that focused on connecting with community pillars in order to build trusting relationships. Successes In order to build long-lasting relationships within the Hispanic community we realized the importance of going beyond just translating outreach materials and programs into Spanish. By building trusting relationships with established pillars of the Hispanic community as outlined in our last post, we were not only able to better understand the interests of the community and inspire a more committed engagement in the project, but work towards building their capacity for future programming and project opportunities. Our approach was to connect with community pillars including churches, schools and parent groups. Community pillars are the places or people, that community members already trust and are a source of comfort, guidance and leadership within the community. We realized that by successfully engaging community pillars, we would be able to build relationships with individual community members and ultimately reach more people as part of our programming. While we engaged a variety of groups as part of this project, our biggest success story was our relationship with the Hispanic congregation TAYR in Brooklyn. From the onset, TAYR showed this willingness to become involved in community stewardship projects and were eager to collaborate. Working together to develop shared goals and programming illustrated our commitment to one another mutually beneficial and partnership. We were reminded that successful community partnerships take time to develop and have to be built on the foundation of mutually beneficial goals and an environment of trust. Initially we started with a long list of community pillars that we hoped to engage. We developed relationships with a Hispanic parent group at a local elementary/middle school, ESL students at a local high school, as well as TAYR. After meeting with various groups, we decided that for this project, we would focus on the quality of the relationship with TAYR rather than quantity, thus building on this genuine commitment from TAYR and ensuring that we weren’t over-extending ourselves or our resources. It was clear from the beginning that the relationship with TAYR was going to be special. We set aside time on a regular basis for meetings with Pastor Martinez and his wife, Veronica, and quickly realized that there were mutual goals. We learned about the community service and environmental project interests of the congregation and in turn, we were able to share potential program and project opportunities, primarily focused on debris prevention. These conversations helped us to collectively develop programs and events that aligned with each other’s goals and had a positive impact on both the community and the environment. TAYR Youth Group at a debris cleanup at Masonville Cove The following is a list outlining our interactions with the TAYR congregation, including program planning, promotion and facilitation: Regular meetings with the Pastor and his wife to plan for programs Attending church services and Sunday school to promote upcoming events Watershed 101 workshop at Masonville Cove (3 participants) Community cleanup in Brooklyn (114 participants) Native Habitat Garden Installation at the Dream Center (51 participants) Pollinator planting Sunday school lesson (33 participants) Latino Conservation Week event at Masonville Cove, including a debris clean-up, fishing, nature walk, and animal encounter (43 participants) Field trip to Patuxent Research Refuge (31 participants) Masonville Cove Fall Debris Clean-Up (6 participants) Programming and event planning with TAYR was a collaborative process, as illustrated and outlined below for the Latino Conservation Week event at Masonville Cove. We pitched the idea of a local event in celebration of Latino Conservation Week to Pastor Martinez and Veronica and discussed what activities would be of interest to their congregation. For example, they mentioned their love of fishing and we made sure to incorporate a fishing station for children as part of the event. They even helped us to rename the event, “Conservando la Naturaleza.” This event reinforced messaging from prior Spring and Summer programming, including lessons about the watershed and how trash flows from the community into Masonville Cove, as well as lessons about the benefit of wildlife habitat in urban areas, drawing upon the experience of planting the pollinator garden in the community and importance of connecting those green spaces to Masonville Cove. This event tied all of the programming together, allowing the community to see firsthand the natural treasures they have been helping to protect. Families fishing at Masonville Cove at the "Conservando la Naturaleza" Event Lessons Learned Over the course of this project we learned how to truly address the needs of a community and meet them where they are, in their community. We started this project wondering how to overcome language and cultural barriers in order to effectively reach the Hispanic community where there was no prior relationship. Our solution was to try to build mutually beneficial partnerships with interested groups. We utilized a community pillar approach and ultimately decided to focus on relationship quality over quantity. By building a strong relationship with the TAYR congregation and having multiple opportunities to engage with them, we’ve developed a partnership that will continue to be fruitful moving forward. We entered this program thinking that by cultivating a community champion and recognizing them as a Shore Hero, that we would foster that deeper, long-term connection. However, we found that we did not need to focus as much on recognition and awards, that the key to building a trusting relationship was finding issues of commonality and concern, to engage people in a way that is relatable. Throughout the project there was this sense that the work and overall collective impact was the true reward, a sentiment that was regularly echoed by community members. This shared feeling really helped to foster our mutually beneficial relationship. This partnership between the National Aquarium and TAYR has been nothing short of incredible. Here is a message from TAYR, expressing what this partnership has meant to them: “Ha sido un privilegio el poder ayudar en la comunidad porque hemos visto muchas caras alegres y las personas agradecidas por mantener un ambiente limpio y saludable. Estamos agradecidos por ser parte de estos eventos y esperamos seguir ayudando en lo que sea necesario. ¡Muchas gracias!” “It has been a great privilege to have helped our community because we have seen many happy faces of people being thankful for keeping a clean and healthy environment. We {TAYR} are truly thankful to be a part of these events and hope to keep helping in any other community needs. Thank you!” Community Engagement Tips and Advice We realize that engaging a new community or audience can be time-consuming, challenging or intimidating, but there are several lessons we learned that we think can help put other aquariums and zoos in the best position to achieve success. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the community, in both the physical and social sense. Just by walking or driving through the neighborhoods, not only do you begin to develop this sense of place, but you gain a better understanding of community assets and resources. From a social perspective, getting to know the community will help you identify specific audiences and community pillars where you may have overlapping interests. As you start this process, make sure to go where people are: the churches, the schools, or even the local businesses like markets and restaurants and reach out to them in a real and authentic way and people are likely to respond positively. 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. It’s important to set aside time to meet in person with representatives of these community pillars to discuss their needs and interests and outline your programmatic goals as well. And because of the time commitment involved, recognize that you may need initially to prioritize, as we did, quality over quantity. From there focus on opportunities to create mutually beneficial goals in order to create a collaborative effort. The importance of collaboration, in all phases of the programmatic process, from development to implementation, can’t be overstated. Once you’ve established partnerships with community pillars, additional opportunities can become available to build new connections with other community pillars. At the end of the day, we found that successful community engagement should focus on that human interaction, showing that you care and are available to listen and provide support. Planting native flowers with TAYR Sunday School Moving Forward For the National Aquarium, the success of this project to engage the Hispanic communities within Brooklyn and Curtis Bay can be attributed to going beyond just translating educational and outreach materials but translating our programmatic experiences to ensure that they were relatable. While this is the culmination of The Ocean Project’s ISG+ grant, this is truly just the beginning of the work that we will continue to do with Hispanic communities. Pastor Martinez is currently working with us to reach out to other Hispanic churches in the area, to vouch for our relationship so we can start building new ones and expanding our efforts. We also want to focus on capacity building throughout the community, to ensure that community groups have the ability and are ready to participate in future program and project efforts.

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2016 World Oceans Day Annual Report

For World Oceans Day 2016, celebrations were held in over 100 countries across the globe, and millions of people were reached online. Our newly released, 2016 Annual Report, highlights the growth and success of World Oceans Day this year. As we prepare for 2017, we are focusing much more not only on rallying the world in June, but also on providing ways for organizations and individuals who get involved on World Oceans Day to become more engaged in protecting and conserving our oceans throughout the year. Thank you for joining this global celebration of our oceans. We look forward growing World Oceans Day even more in 2017! Many zoos and aquariums created unique ways to celebrate World Oceans Day - have a look at the latest blog from the Seattle Aquarium on the World Oceans Day website to see all the ways they found to celebrate this special day. It's not too early to let us know that you are interested in partnering with us for World Oceans Day 2017, or if you just want to learn more about World Oceans Day please contact us: info@worldoceansday.org.  

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Thank you, President Obama, for Designating the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument!

On behalf of its network of 2,000 aquariums, zoos, museums, youth groups, and conservation organizations across all 50 states and 100 countries, The Ocean Project thanks President Obama for designating the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, and creating a lasting legacy for current and future generations of Americans. During this 100th anniversary year of the National Park Service, we thank President Obama particularly for his leadership in protecting more of our nation’s ocean than any administration in history. Using science-based decision-making, and with the input from across the country – including aquariums and zoos along with an unprecedented involvement of our youth – President Obama has become a true world leader for marine conservation, especially by creating and expanding “blue parks” that will enrich all of our lives. During his time at the helm, the President has comprehensively addressed fisheries issues, opened a new public process for establishing marine sanctuaries, established the National Ocean Policy, and promoted ocean stewardship. Notably, this designation comes following the August expansion by the President of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM) in Hawaii. Credit: NOAA Oceans Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast US Canyons Expedition Science Team President Obama has added a significant victory for the health of our ocean and our planet by designating the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. The first such monument designated in the Atlantic Ocean, this spectacular area contains extinct underwater volcanoes, or seamounts, that rise higher than every other mountain east of the Rockies, and canyons that are deeper than the Grand Canyon. Nearly 200 miles off the coast of Cape Cod and Rhode Island, these seamounts and canyons are teeming with ocean life, from deep-diving sperm whales and beaked whales, to dolphins, sea turtles, and also many seabirds, such as the Atlantic puffin. This most recent designation also protects the most abundant and diverse communities of deep sea corals known to exist on the Atlantic seaboard, some hundreds if not thousands of years old. Sperm whales traveling in a unit. Credit: Kelsey Stone, New England Aquarium This designation of the first marine national monument in the Atlantic adds to President Obama’s legacy of having protected more land and water than any other president, and is an action strongly supported by recent surveys. According to recent surveys conducted at a number of aquariums across the country – as part of a special partnership with SEA LIFE Trust and the 8 SEA LIFE Aquariums in North America, 97% of visitors were in favor of expanding our nation’s network of marine protected areas. Protecting our blue backyard is important to people, no matter where they live. With the growing impact of climate change and ocean acidification threatening our ocean’s – and our planet’s health – setting aside special areas in the ocean will provide some resiliency to these increasing stresses. As ocean temperatures rise and acidity threatens marine life, providing sanctuary through habitat protection from other threats helps to preserve genetic diversity, which will be vital for the ocean's inhabitants to be able to withstand more acidic and warmer conditions in the future. This designation is also supported by a growing coalition of young leaders, who have come together in Sea Youth Rise Up, a collaborative campaign between The Ocean Project, the World Oceans Day network, Big Blue & You and the Youth Ocean Conservation Summit. The effort recently brought together seven young ocean conservationists from across the United States, as well as Canada and the Bahamas, to meet with leaders in New York and Washington D.C. and share their message of the importance of protecting our ocean. Credit: NOAA Oceans Explorer Program

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ISG+ Final Report: Say #byetobags with the Saint Louis Zoo!

This guest post is submitted by Kirinne Slaughter at the Saint Louis Zoo, and is the last in a 3-part series on their Innovative Solutions Grants+ project. It is hard to believe that it has been almost a year since we began our partnership with The Ocean Project under the Innovative Solutions Grants+ Program. It has been an exciting and rewarding year for everyone involved in the project, especially our Zoo ALIVE teen volunteers as they have developed and implemented the #byetobags campaign. (See previous post). This campaign, based on the successes of the Better Bag Challenge, aimed to get Zoo visitors to make the change to reusable bags. For our innovative twist, we used social media in an attempt to amplify the effects of our on-grounds campaign. KEY FINDINGS As our data collection comes to a close with the end of our summer event season, we have concluded that social media can be an invaluable tool to increasing the effectiveness of an on-grounds campaign. Specifically, our results can be summarized into three key findings: Our on-grounds campaign confirmed the success of the public engagement model from the Better Bag Challenge. Since our first official event on April 23rd, 90% of guests that were asked during their visit to take the pledge did so, and most did so with enthusiasm! The teens approached guests who came near their activity table, connected the problem of plastics in our ocean to its impact on the animals using their own messaging (as I’ll explain later), and then asked guests to pledge to avoid disposable plastic bags in exchange for a reusable bag. And, again, a remarkable 90% of those who were asked filled out a pledge form and “signed” it by providing us with their email address.  One guest even hugged each teen, thanking them for the work they were doing. As of the end of August, 1,373 visitors pledged to switch from plastic bags to reusable bags, and 1,669 #byetobags reusable bags have been given away! To “gut check” our impact, we also tracked the taking of small and medium plastic bags in our gift shops, where bags are available upon request, and found that use was down 9% since the beginning of the year, while the sale of reusable bags had increased by 65%!  While our project can’t claim credit for all of this impact, it certainly was reassuring to see the trend moving in the right direction. Teens working Shark Week We also tried to generate pledges, and found a consistent (but comparatively low) return on investment. As a part of our project, we wanted to know if we could get people to take our pledge through social media, with no interaction on grounds and no bag in return. We embedded links to the pledge page into #byetobags social media accounts and posts we created on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram, as well as onto the Saint Louis Zoo website. While the social media platforms garnered a consistent number of pledges each week, we found that when comparing the number of pledges generated with the number of hours invested, our teens were much more effective - by our estimates more than twice as effective - in their on-grounds engagements. But, we concluded that our social media effort was still important, especially when thinking in broader terms of increasing our project’s overall reach. Of the platforms that we did use, the #byetobags Facebook page was our most successful in this regard - in spite of the teens’ initial doubts!  - growing to nearly 300 likes and a reach of over 25,000 - it proved to be a great platform to engage with individuals, including but not limited to those who completed the pledge form.  Meanwhile, Twitter was our second most successful platform, used primarily for interacting with other plastic pollution organizations, and making professional connections such as St. Louis City Recycling and Earth Share.  So having a variety of social media accounts was useful for us, as each platform can be utilized in different ways including and beyond generating pledges. We learned that those who took the pledge were willing to share their commitment with friends and family, but did not utilize the mechanisms that we created and provided to them. We created a platform with our email service provider through which we emailed every person who took the pledge, giving them the option to then share the pledge out to their friends and family by using one of our preset share buttons that would link them either to Facebook, Twitter, or their email. While we were anticipating a snowball effect, we found that this method did not see the success in which we had hoped. Only a handful of visitors - less than 5 of the nearly 1,600 pledge takers - used the social sharing options we provided to them via email, with 42 total unique social shares. Surprisingly, though, some visitors were very willing to share the pledge utilizing a different method, one that we originally did not anticipate – they copied and pasted the link to our pledge page into their own posts and used #byetobags. Our teens found more than 10 examples where visitors did this, with one person even sharing out the pledge in a Google link format she created, generating another 8 pledges. It seems our guests are willing to share the message, but we need to rethink how we help them to do it! Who takes the #byetobags pledge? As a part of our pledge form, we gave guests the option to select their age group from a drop down menu, and to answer the question, “How often do you use reusable bags?” These questions give us some insight into who is most often taking our pledge on-grounds versus who is most often taking our pledge online.  As shown in the charts, we found that on grounds the most common age group of pledge takers were 31-45 year olds, while online it was 12-18 years olds. This suggests that social media accounts can help us reach a distinct group of pledge takers, notably the youth that research tells us are so important to our missions, and who may be more likely to pledge to conservation action via the internet. Additionally, of the 1,521 total pledge takers who choose to answer the question, “How often do you use reusable bags?” 57% stated that they either “often” or “always” use reusable bags, which was notably higher than the 40% of the public reported by the grocery industry as the national average (Source: http://www.fmi.org/research-resources/u-s-grocery-shopper-trends/grocerytrends2014)  So our pledge may have been more of a reinforcement and reminder to those who already use reusable bags, with encouragement to share with others.  It will be an interesting challenge as we move forward to see how we can do better, on our own and with our guests, at reaching those who rarely or never use reusable bags. Our goal of course being that one-day, everyone will select, “always.”  #byetobags continues at the Saint Louis Zoo program Thanks to funding from a Saint Louis Zoo family donor, the #byetobags campaign will be able to continue at the Saint Louis Zoo for another year! As mentioned in the previous blog post, this campaign is the first of its kind at the Saint Louis Zoo, and the opportunity to continue will allow for further fine tuning, paving the road for the Zoo to have many more in the future. We have a number of very targeted goals for the upcoming year, including: Implementing a bag policy in the gift shops that is more in line with our #byetobags messaging. We had some initial success as noted above, and will continue working with our retail team, as well as the Business and Strategic Operations Departments at the Zoo to come up with a bag policy that works for all. We are also looking forward to pushing our message further outside the Zoo into the St. Louis community. To launch this, the #byetobags campaign is going to be the feature article in our quarterly stlzoo magazine that goes out to all 50,215 of our membership households. Additionally, our Zoo ALIVE teen volunteers are anxious to continue to spread the message to their high schools and our Young Zoo Friends board, a group of young professionals who are Zoo members, are extremely interested in the campaign and are eager to take the message back to their home companies and organizations. Finally, the Saint Louis Zoo is excited to be hosting a Youth Ocean Conservation Summit on our campus on February 11, 2017. Youth Ocean Conservation Summit is a youth-oriented conference whose goal is to educate about how to turn a conservation idea into an action project. The event will feature notable speakers and workshops that will teach young people the skills they need to start a conservation project. We are excited to be hosting the first summit in the Midwest, and are eager to feature #byetobags as an example of a youth run campaign. We are eager to see where the second year of the #byetobags campaign takes us. All departments at the Zoo have been supportive of the project and the possibilities for expansion are truly endless! Teens with Dr. Jeffrey Bonner Advice to others As we reflect back on the creation of our campaign, it is an honor for us to be able to offer advice to other institutions hoping to create similar campaigns. Guests are excited to be asked to partake in a conservation action campaign. Our results confirmed The Ocean Project’s finding that they 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, but some were willing to share that pledge with friends and family, and stay invested in a conservation action campaign on social media – we just need to give them more flexibility to share more easily and on their own terms. Use multiple social media platforms, manage each separately, and play to their strengths. Managing each separately, as opposed to making one post for all, allows you to truly tailor the post to each platform’s strengths. Allow for teens to be creative and experimental in messaging. One of the most exciting and successful parts of our campaigns was allowing the teens to experiment with the delivery of the #byetobags message. The emphasis was on connecting the requested action to its importance for the animals, but the teens also were given the ability to deliver the #byetobags message in the way that was most comfortable for them, they were more excited, and more eager to get pledges. Finally, one thing that worked out well for us was that for this project we hired a part-time campaign coordinator, funded by the ISG+ grant. Having someone completely devoted to the #byetobags campaign made communication, facilitation and advocacy about the campaign seamless, and gave the Zoo ALIVE Teen’s a great resource for the project. It also allowed for the message to spread further and faster as the campaign was not limited by staff attention or availability. Overall, this year has been amazingly rewarding. As one Zoo ALIVE teen volunteer, Kiara Hardmon states, “I am really proud to have made an impact for the environment at such a young age.” As the project continues, we are eager to allow more Zoo ALIVE teens the opportunity to work on a project that allows them to feel proud of themselves, while positively influencing the environment around them! #byetobags spreading to Africa

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Shedd Aquarium Pledges to Protect our Blue Planet Year-Round

This guest blog comes from Aislinn Gauchay, Assistant Director of Great Lakes and Sustainability at Shedd Aquarium.  Shedd Aquarium is a Supporting Partner of The Ocean Project.   Earth. The third rock from the sun. Our humble planet has many names, but what makes our Blue Planet truly unique is what covers 71 percent of our surface and without which life would not exist: water. Oceans are the heart of our planet: they shape weather and wind, are home to one million animal and plant species and are the primary source of protein for more than 2.6 billion people. Oceans serve as the foundation for a delicately balanced food web that supports all life, from the Marianas Trench to the top of Mount Everest. Our oceans and the animals that call them home are critical to sustaining life on earth, human life included. However, our relationship to and dependence upon healthy, abundant oceans is not universally acknowledged.  The most critical threats to our oceans are produced by human activity, such as overfishing, habitat degradation and pollution. More than 8 million tons of plastic trash end up in the ocean every year, including millions of disposable plastic bags and bottles. Though our oceans are often uncelebrated, there is one day out of the year where a plethora of organizations like the Ocean Project and Shedd Aquarium team up to celebrate what makes our planet blue on World Ocean’s Day. For this year’s celebration, the Ocean Project and singer Jack Johnson ignited the #WaveForChange challenge, asking people to do something to help our oceans. Shedd Aquarium’s President and CEO Dr. Bridget Coughlin took the #WaveForChange challenge on behalf of our organization and pledged to continue to reduce our plastic usage, spread the message, and encourage others to join us in making a difference. Shedd Aquarium is taking action on the issue of plastic pollution in our ocean and is constantly looking for ways to reduce our use of this seemingly omnipresent commodity in innovative ways. We started small, by providing reusable bags instead of disposable plastic bags, installing reusable water bottle refilling stations, and eliminating plastic straws onsite. Our goal is to continue this initiative at Shedd, in our community, and throughout the country. For example, during this year’s Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series event in Chicago, we worked with race organizers and sustainability partner organizations 11th Hour Racing and America’s Cup Endeavor Chicago to inform event attendees and thousands of guests visiting Chicago’s landmark Navy Pier about the impact of plastic pollution on our lakes and oceans, offering them an opportunity to pledge to reduce their household plastic use. In 2015, we extended our commitment to freshwater and marine conservation at a higher level by joining forces with two other aquariums, Monterey Bay Aquarium and National Aquarium, to form the Aquarium Conservation Partnership (ACP). As a co-founder, and thus an executive committee member, Shedd works with fellow industry leaders to advance ocean and freshwater conservation policy goals. This includes advocating for the expansion of marine protected areas and increasing protection for exploited species. At Shedd, conservation is critical to everything we do.  Whether it be sourcing only sustainable, restaurant quality seafood for our animals or pledging to reduce our use of plastic, Shedd believes we can all take steps and make a big difference toward protecting and preserving our oceans. We can do more together than alone. You can learn more about Shedd’s conservation initiatives on our website.  

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Rising Up for the Ocean

    Growing up on the coast of Florida, I had the chance to connect to unique marine environments and their inhabitants at an early age. Experiences with my family exploring Florida’s water resources, and learning more about these habitats through summer camps and education programs prompted my first interest in the wonder of the ocean. As I got older, my interest in marine science grew into an interest in ocean conservation – working with my friends and family to take action to protect the priceless marine resources of my home state. Through these early experiences I learned the importance of the ocean, how it connects people from all backgrounds on a global scale, and how it plays a key role in the existence of life on earth. At a young age I also learned the ocean is in trouble. From plastic pollution and climate change, to overfishing and habitat destruction, this priceless natural resource is threatened by the actions we take on a daily basis. Now through my work directing the Youth Ocean Conservation Summit, and work with aquariums and conservation organizations on a global scale, I’ve seen the urgent need for action to address these challenges now. I’ve also seen the importance of engaging young people as leaders in the ocean conservation field, building on their passion, new ideas, and energy to build a movement to protect our blue planet. The Sea Youth Rise Up campaign, launched in the spring of 2016 as a collaborative effort between The Ocean Project, World Oceans Day network, the Big Blue & You and the Youth Ocean Conservation Summit, is designed as a platform for young people to rise up for our ocean, share the important work of young conservation leaders, and inspire a global audience of young people to understand the important leadership role they play in protecting the ocean. Utilizing World Oceans Day as a rallying point, the campaign brought together seven young ocean conservationists from the United States, Canada, and the Bahamas: Ben May, Laura Johnson, Dazja Dorsey, Baylee Ritter, Simeon Bethel, Lindsy Myers, and Gabriella Schauber, for three days in New York City and Washington D.C. – allowing these incredible students to share their message of the importance of protecting our ocean with world leaders and their peers. Selected through a global video contest, as well as nominations from our Sea Youth Rise Up partner organizations, our 2016 Sea Youth Rise Up delegates arrived in New York City on June 7, 2016 and prepared for an exciting lineup of events and activities to celebrate World Oceans Day 2016. During our time in New York, Sea Youth Rise Up co-creator, Danni Washington and I joined our delegates for a Live World Oceans Day Google Hangout on Air, hosted from the New York Aquarium, where delegates had the opportunity to share their ocean conservation work and interests, the importance of youth leadership in the field of ocean conservation, and advice for other young people interested in ocean conservation who watched the broadcast from around the world in the United States, New Zealand, India, Curacao, Pakistan, Germany, Somalia, Greece, the Bahamas and Canada. A #SeaYouthRiseUp social media and Thunderclap campaign further highlighted the importance of youth leadership in ocean conservation to a global audience. Delegates also had the exciting opportunity to meet with ocean conservationist and singer/songwriter Jack Johnson, and attend the United Nations World Oceans Day reception. After a whirlwind tour through New York City, our Sea Youth Rise Up team headed out early on June 9 for our nation’s Capital where they participated in a White House Roundtable with members of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Through this unique experience, delegates had a chance to share their support for the creation of additional marine protected areas, and discuss the administration’s ocean conservation priorities. Our D.C. adventures continued with a stop at the Newseum for Capitol Hill Oceans Week, where our team members took part in a live broadcast with the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, and visits with staff members from Youth Service America and EarthEcho International during a wrap up picnic on national mall. We are incredibly proud and inspired by the young people who stepped up and raised their voices for the protection of our ocean through this special event. We’re also excited to continue to share their stories through the upcoming Sea Youth Rise Up short film, tracing their ocean conservation journeys and Sea Youth Rise Up experience, further calling on a global movement of young people to rise up and take on the challenges facing our planet’s marine ecosystems. A special thanks to the partners and sponsors who made this program possible – The Ocean Project, World Oceans Day network, Big Blue & You, Youth Ocean Conservation Summit, NOAA, the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, the Coastal Ecosystem Learning Center network, jetBlue, the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium, Youth Service America, and EarthEcho International. We are incredibly grateful for your support and belief in the power of young people to positively impact our planet. If you’d like to learn more about Sea Youth Rise Up, and the inspiring work of our 2016 delegates, be sure to check out www.seayouthriseup.com or connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.   Sean Russell is the co-creator of Sea Youth Rise Up. He is the founder and director of the Youth Ocean Conservation Summit, and works with SeaWorld, Mote Marine Laboratory, and conservation organizations on a global scale on youth leadership initiatives. You can follow him on twitter at @seandrussell.

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SEA LIFE Centers find public support for Marine Protected Areas

SEA LIFE Aquariums and SEA LIFE Trust wanted to know if visitors shared our interest in expanding our nation’s network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). With this in mind, we initiated in partnership with The Ocean Project a pilot project at two of our sites, Carlsbad and Orlando. We developed an exit survey with a program called iSurvey that allows for offline collection on iPads, and then site staff randomly sampled our guests about their opinions of marine protected areas, as well as their feedback on our being involved in this effort.  Guests responded well to the iPads, and we were able to collect a sample large enough to have a high degree of confidence in the results. We looked at the overall results, as well as the results for a subset of guests who participated in a voting activity (I’ll explain in more detail below), and another subset of guests who received additional interpretation. The overall response on the exit survey was overwhelmingly positive, with yet more evidence for the earlier research findings that visitors to aquariums and zoos truly do expect, trust and appreciate information about how they can help the ocean and its animals. If anyone is still asking whether or not we as aquariums and zoos “inspire” the public’s interest in addressing environmental issues, look no further than the following chart, which shows that while on site a full two-thirds indicated that they believed their actions could have a great deal of impact on environmental problems.  Moreover, we had more than 98%, yes, more than 98% of our guests agreed with the statements that “SEA LIFE Aquariums are a good source of information about ocean conservation” and “Learning how to help conserve the ocean and its animals makes for a better visit to a SEA LIFE Aquarium.”  In sum, we have access to the public when they are inspired to act, and they’re telling us that they trust our guidance and appreciate learning how to help – so let’s be bold! On the particular issue of MPAs, our guests were just as positive, with again strong agreement both for the idea of expanding our nation’s network of protected areas and for the involvement of our aquariums in that effort.  So if picking an issue on which to be bold, MPAs certainly seem like a good choice! And notably this was not a hypothetical question. During his presidency, President Obama already has shown a willingness to support marine protection by significantly expanding the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument in 2014 and then announcing two completely new marine sanctuaries in October 2015 .   At the same time, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been soliciting nominations for new protected areas.  This is why at Sea Life we’ve come to see now as the right time to invite the public into this issue, document their interest, and bring it back to our policy leaders. In an interesting twist to our pilot we also aimed to test the impact of an activity, and the impact of interpretation on guest response.   A subset of guests at both sites participated in a simple voting activity, where they were handed a paper ballot, which gave basic background on the sanctuary nomination process and asked if they supported the idea, yes or no.  The voting activity was low cost and easy to implement, and guests liked it. And they certainly liked the idea of expanding the sanctuary system, with a full 94% voting in favor, and based on a related question, primarily out of concern for the animals.  Meanwhile, a separate subset of guests at our Carlsbad site received interpretation, talking with one of our educators about MPAs. The interpretation was more resource intensive, taking up a lot of staff time, but again guests liked the interactions.  But did either experience impact their response on the exit survey?  We didn’t have as much confidence in these findings due to the relatively small sample sizes, but indications were that even though the baseline of ‘visit alone’ was quite high, the response from those who participated in the voting activity or received interpretation was even higher.  Moreover, the voting exercise had the benefit of documenting public interest in the issue in a way that could be easily relayed. What’s next?  Based on the promising results of the pilot, and some timely advice from policy experts, we’re revising the approach to focus on a revamped version of the voting activity. Our goal is now to invite as many guests as possible to tell us which of four areas currently under they’d like to see protected as #blueparks.  And we’ll also be reaching out online with a presence at http://bluebackyard.org, where, in fact, you should go now to cast your vote! ~This guest post was submitted by Chris Andrews from Sea Life 

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