CoralWatch Ambassadors – an incredible team, passionate about protecting the reef.
In the first weekend of February, eleven of our Ambassadors came together at Moreton Bay Research Station on N.Stradbroke Island to re-connect, reminish and re-inspire. It was a very successful workshop, where each ambassador presented their activities over the last 8 months and upcoming plans. Ambassador activities ranged from presentations at schools and conferences, organising teacher and stem workshops, movie night, creating art and game to raise reef awareness, beach clean-ups, snorkeltours, stalls during festivals, markets. Favourites were the children! So many inspiring young people, passionate teachers, ReefBlitz, make learning fun and relevant to non-scientists, plastic art, working with other ambassadors. Challenges experienced are the weather incl rain and wind, time, winning hearts and minds, getting the right message across, talking to the non-converted, Reef trips are expensive, people have good intentions but forget sometimes
On Saturday afternoon we went for a snorkel and collected Coral Health Chart data at Amity Point rock wall. It was nice and calm and very relaxing. In the evening during dinner we announced our ambassadors awards. The EDUCATION award was given to Somone Boston for organising a teacher PD and STEM girls workshop in collaboration with HarbourWatch and Boyne Island Environmental Education Centre. Natalie Lobartolo received the MONITORING award for all her surveys and outreach activities with Dive for Change and Lady Musgrave Experience. David Kopelke received the OUTREACH award for all his activities at Boyne Island Environmental Education Centre including writing grants and international presentations in Taiwan. And last but not least Natalie Meiklejohn received the ART award for her plastic art creations that were used during our Corals in the Outback tour and the plastic reef art activity during ReefBlitz event.
With the help of our fantastic team of Ambassadors, CoralWatch managed to organised 98 events in 2018 with direct outreach to 9408 people. We like to thank all our ambassadors for their amazing input!
CoralWatch aims to organise another Ambassador workshop in the second half of 2019.