Pelican1 has arrived home in Bermagui after a three week journey down the East coast and over a months engagement in projects along the east coast of the Cape. She has now been overhauled and is heading down to Melbourne for Two Bays 2012.
Two Bays provides a unique opportunity for bay managers and stakeholders to build knowledge, engage coastal communities and form partnerships to better understand and protect bay values, and to highlight our links with bay health. The program is designed to develop deeper cross-collaboration and knowledge sharing within the agencies that manage the bays, connect the local communities to their marine parks and fit in as much science as we can. We are looking forward to involving some local Primary schools from both bays this year. The program has strong partnerships in the local Aboriginal communities and has gained a deeper understanding of the powerful connections of the Kulin nation to their sea country. Two Bays curriculum has been developed for Primary and Secondary that has marine science embedded in the deep-time traditional knowledge that has been shared by traditional owners.
We are going to try to keep up with the pace of the program and share each day through blogs and tweets.
If you live or travel near the bays, have a look out to see if you can spot Pelican1, making her annual rounds of Port Phillip and Western Port Bay. We will be measuring water quality continuously and getting as many people on the water as we can comfortably contain. We will be out and about between the 21 January and 10 February, 2012.
This is a partnership program that could not be sustained without the support from agencies, organisations, universities, schools, councils and individual scientists and researchers. In particular, the ongoing support of Parks Victoria has enabled the program to develop, mature and continue into its seventh year.
For further information please contact Natalie Davey via natalie@saltwaterprojects.com.au.
