For Hawaii’s people, every day can easily be an ocean day, but there is also an annual World Oceans Day, June 8, dedicated to inspiring awareness and conservation of the planet’s blue mantle of seas and the life and climate regulation they sustain.
In a campaign called 30×30, the 17-year-old global event is asking participants to call on world leaders to protect 30% of the world’s ocean by 2030 through establishing a network of highly protected areas for marine life.
This year, however, with large, in-person interactions not feasible due to the new coronavirus pandemic, local organizations will hold ocean education activities online.
Today from 3 to 5 p.m., Oahu’s Ko Olina Resort, in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the City and County of Honolulu Storm Water Quality Branch and community groups, is hosting a free virtual event to celebrate World Oceans Day on the Facebook page of Oiwi TV.
Viewers can learn about sea turtles and other marine life, interact live with a NOAA scientist, take an art lesson from renowned Hawaii artist Patrick Ching, do some cooking and be entertained by Kimie Miner, Nathan Aweau, Paula Fuga, Kawika Kahiapo and others.
Champion bodysurfer and retired Honolulu City and County lifeguard Mark Cunningham, who collects and makes sculptures from ocean trash, will introduce a screening of “Smog of the Sea,” about a journey he sailed on with musician Jack Johnson, filmmakers Keith and Dan Malloy, diver Kimi Werner and scientist Marcus Eriksen to collect and study microplastics in the remote, mysterious Sargasso Sea.
Viewers can join in at facebook.com/OiwiTV
In another free online program aimed at engaging keiki in ocean learning, the Waikiki Aquarium has partnered with NOAA’s Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary in a weekly interactive series, “Ocean Classroom,” to be taught by Patty Miller, the sanctuary’s education coordinator, starting June 24.
“Students will be encouraged to create their own coral reef habitats and animals that live there using a variety of arts and crafts and household materials,” Miller said.
Topics will include the biology of humpback whales and how marine debris impacts them and their habitat; coral reefs and their denizens; and oceanography, including currents, chemistry and the origins of sand.
The series will be held at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesdays, from June 24 to July 22, on the Waikiki Aquarium Facebook page, @waikiki aquarium and the aquarium website waikikiaquarium.org/.
