Raising awareness to protect the world's oceans

Sussex marine and beach conservation groups collaborated to promote and raise awareness of the global calendar event, which began in Canada 1992 but wasn't recognised by the United Nations until late 2008.

World Oceans Day aims to protect and honour the world's oceans through promoting campaigns and calling on community action to conserve the ocean and its resources. “It’s really really exciting and we just want to find out more and let people know that there are dolphins out there,” said Alex Hughes, leader of the Brighton Dolphin Project.Involved in the day’s event were the Brighton Dolphin Project, Pier to Pier Silent Disco Beach Clean and A Drop in the Ocean art installation overseen by creator Irene Solar and Brighton and Hove City Council. Brighton Dolphins Project organised an immersive rock pool experience, a VR-reality dolphin-watching boat trip and a free-for-all education centre. Pier to Pier organised a drop-in beach clean which saw the collection of glass, plastic and paper from Brighton beach. And A Drop in the Ocean art installation opened an opportunity for the public to get involved in sewing collected bottled tops together as part of a new year-long project. With the installation due to finish in March 2019, it will show an infographic sculpture of the thousands of found bottle tops, colour coded by brand, running from the Volks railway line to possibly Brighton Marina. “Since March we have been collecting through beach cleans, city cleans and in a few cafes and kiosks along the seafront with collection bins for bottle tops,” said Irene Solar, the project's initiator. There was a total of 9,320 bottle tops found from Hove along to Rottingdean.Newly opened Dolphin Discovery Centre, a little east of Brighton pier is leading a community-project to broaden knowledge on Sussex marine life, calling out for any photos the public may have obtained of dolphins to cross reference their identity. “One of our aims is to actually get out into the water and start doing some surveys ourselves, and to analyse any trends that we find and to have more research into Brighton’s dolphins. We want to know if there’s certain individuals that come back year after year or whether its always a different group,” explained Miss Hughes. To find out more about the Brighton Dolphin Project, click here.

For more on the Pier to Pier beach clean, click here.

And for A Drop in the Ocean art exhibition, click here.