Training course Save Our Seas in Craotia with Argonauta association

After a great and busy summer at Project MARE, September began with the motivating opportunity of doing a nine-day training course called Save Our Seas (S.O.S.). Check the video!!

Save Our Seas!! Really?? Can you imagine a most interesting topic for MARE people?

The Italian team, composed Simona, Francesca and myself (Nuria) went to Croatia plenty of enthusiasm and with the idea of learning new things about marine conservancy and of meeting other sea lovers willing to do their bit to protect our seas.

The experience was up to our expectations, the first day we met the 25 participants, a group of really nice people, who were mainly from the Mediterranean countries (Spain, Greece, Croatia, Turkey), and some of them from the Atlantic (Portugal) and Baltic (Latvia) coasts.

After some ice breaking and presentation games the international sea-environment training course started. The next days were full of experiences, shared moments, activities, games, presentations, videos, laughter, worries, positive energy, frustrating issues…. because Save Our Seas isn´t an easy task!!

It’s worth highlighting some of the more enriching activities, at least to me:

• We all have an ecological behaviour and try to do our best in our daily habits… Or do we? Are we really aware of the environmental consequences of the most common activities in our life? Let´s go to deep in it! Calculate the carbon footprint created by a plane trip, or the imprint of food, clothes or phones that we usually use… This might make us reconsider our habits. Together we can think many options and alternatives to better perform!
• After each of us presented the worst marine problem suffered where we came from, we could see how wide are the issues but also that priority actions change depending on the place.

• It is difficult to have a global vision of a big, but there are different mental models, that can constitute really interesting tools. Thus we can face huge world problems like marine pollution, global warming or overfishing in different ways. If we get to understand why we arrive to this point is easier to find solutions or alternatives.
• What happens if we make some research to know how many straws, plastic glasses or bags are used per day just in a country? The resulting number is quite embarrassing. We may think that using plastic bags is not so bad as long as we recycle them… Well, after checking the plastic waste we produce it´s easy to realize that recycling is not enough! Consuming less is the key!
• The best way to understand marine issues is going into the water. Snorkelling to compare biodiversity, sizes and quantity of marine life between a protected place and a non-protected one is a great way to start.
• How to spread information and to do environmental education in an interesting way is a really important and hard task. Organize a workshop about a marine topic and present it to your colleagues, the experience can be from stressful to fun, but overall it is really useful for our future.

After that intensive training we came back to Italy with loads of ideas, tools and new friends! Thank you all, participants and trainers, for this great experience!