Highlights of 2014
CAMEOS Continues Indonesian Collaboration on Marine Debris and Coastal Rehabilitation CAMEOS Fellows Brian Cheng, Sarah Hameed, Dale Trockel and Director Susan Williams continued to work with Indonesian school children and teachers on marine debris issues. A regular sampling program will help determine trends in marine debris over time.
In March, Sarah, Dale, and Susan participated in a community outreach day organized by the faculty and students from Hasanuddin University, Makassar, Sulawesi, organized a community outreach effort that included marine debris sampling and also seagrass restoration. The collaboration is supported by USAID and the National Science Foundation.
- You can help eliminate marine debris.
- Clean up the beach with friends.
- Re-use and recycle plastic.
The seagrass restoration team prepares for the community outreach. Around one hundred islanders, from children to village leaders, attended the outreach event.
Dr. Rohani Ambo-Rappe, our faculty collaborator at Hasanuddin University, grew seagrass seedlings for the community to transplant in a restoration research project.
Above: Sarah and Dale sample fish in Paotere fish market, Makassar, Sulawesi. Over 100 vendors sell over 50 species of fishes, some of which depend on seagrass beds. Fish censusing and identification is another skill CAMEOS participants gain in the project.
Seagrass restoration plots marked by white quadrats. Rabbit fish are grazing between the white quadrats. CAMEOS Fellows Brian, Dale, and Sarah, NSF IGERT Fellow Jessica Abbott joined Susan and Dr. Ambo-Rappe and her students to work on the experiment.
Highlights of 2013
CAMEOS Marine Debris Curriculum Goes International in Indonesia Indonesian school children ask marine scientists “How can we protect our ocean?”
Dale Trockel (Fellow, 2010-2012) and Susan Williams, from the CAMEOS program, visited primary schools on Barrang Lompo, in the Spermonde Islands off Makassar, southwest Sulawesi, along with undergraduate and graduate students, staff, and faculty colleagues from the marine science program at Universitas Hasanuddin. With the support of local teachers, the team taught students how to sample the marine debris littering their white sand beaches. Like BML, Universitas Hasanuddin runs a marine station dedicated to ocean education and research, located on Barrang Lompo.
Marine debris is a global problem and provides a compelling example for teaching ocean science and how the land, the sea, and humans are tightly linked. In a collaboration with Indonesian scientists and students from Hasanuddin University in southwest Sulawesi, BML’s CAMEOS program worked with primary schools in the Spermonde Islands. Together, we taught school children how to census the marine debris that litters their islands and monitor the effect that a new recycling program has on the debris volume over time. These eager children asked us “How can we protect our ocean?” Safe drinking water is not readily available throughout Indonesia, except bottled in plastic, so marine plastic debris accumulates readily. Some of this plastic also ends up ensnarled on coral reefs, damaging the corals and other organisms. Susan and Dale's trip was supported by a grant from UC Davis' Outreach and International Programs, with matching funds provided by Mars Symbioscience.