The Kids Are Taking It To The Beach!

This past week, over a thousand Chinese schoolchildren came together for the 2^nd annual “Kids Ocean Week” in Hong Kong to express their passion and concern for the ocean.   On Nov 8, they assembled in Repulse Bay to bring a huge message to the world through the creation of this human art project.  It is SO worth 14 seconds of your time, so please watch:

Organized by Ocean Recovery Alliance, the goal of Kids Ocean Week is help students become aware and understand the health of the ocean and its ecosystem. Launched last year in Hong Kong, it included the first ocean film festival for children.  This traveling show is brought to variety of schools over an 8-10 day period and is coupled with school talks by Doug Woodring from Ocean Recovery Alliance and Michael Klubock from the Malibu Foundation for Environmental Education about ocean protection issues.  Klubock has given talks to hundreds of thousands of school children over the past 18 years about the issues related to marine protection.  

The activities began with a picture drawing competition eight weeks before the event in which children submitted artwork for the piece.  

This year, the final design was based on 2 drawings by a 5th and a 6th grade student in Hong Kong who wanted to raise international awareness of the shark fin trade.   

Though the tide is slowly turning in favor of shark conservation, more than 70 million sharks are killed every year, with Hong Kong importing about 10,000 tons annually for the past decade.  Most of those fins are then exported to mainland China.

Photo Credit: Jeff Pantukhoff, Copyright 2013

The children turned a tragic tale into a message of hope.  In the timelapse video, we first see a shark with a detached fin with the caption "Save Me" in Chinese.  The image then morphs and the fin reattaches to the shark as it becomes “alive” -- its pectoral fin moves up and life returns to its eye.   The word "Respect" appears.

 

These kids are indeed a huge inspiration to all who care about the ocean and its wildlife.  Bravo to these young Tide Turners who are helping to save sharks by getting their message out to the world!

Read More and Get Involved:

http://www.oceanrecov.org/

http://www.oceanrecov.org/activities/events/kids-ocean-week.html

http://kidsoceanday.org

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-china-victory-for-wildlife-conservation-as-citizens-persuaded-to-give-up-shark-fin-soup/2013/10/19/e8181326-3646-11e3-89db-8002ba99b894_story.html

Sign the petition:  
 https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Extinction_is_forever_2

And please join the Tide Turners community of Facebook and follow us on Twitter.  Together we have the power to turn tides on ocean health and awareness!