2008 Official Explorer
Online Journal

In my last blog I talked about the TUNZA children’s conference in Stavanger, Norway that I attended. In one of the workshops I participated in, we concluded that to solve pressing world problems we would all need to work together. That doesn’t just mean all of us in the U.S., that means all of us in the entire WORLD. If we don’t, we might end up having to move to Mars to escape the state of the earth. When we work together, we can address everyone’s needs, and use our collective thinking to solve our problems.

To this end, at the conference we met three times over the course of five days in “action groups”. We met in these groups to discuss ways to better protect our environment. At the end of the conference, all of our ideas were summarized into a list of commitments that we hoped every child in the world would work to implement.

We brainstormed commitments on 4 themes; water, energy, biodiversity, and production and consumption. These commitments are things that each and every one of us can do every day to help our earth. I truly enjoyed attending the action groups. It was really rewarding and it was wonderful to hear the ideas from people from other countries.

Here is an example of a commitment that we made in each of the four categories:

• Water: Participate in a beach, river, or lake clean-up.
• Energy: Turn off lights when not in use.
• Biodiversity: Plant a tree on every birthday.
• Production and Consumption: Minimize the use of plastic bags and paper. (For example, always remember to write on both sides of paper and then recycle it!)

The rest of the commitments that we came up with are listed on UNEP's web site. I am going to try to implement each and every one of these commitments. You can read the commitments agreed upon at the conference and implement them in your life too!

At the recent World Ocean Day event, Ayla Besemer (2007 official explorer), Alexa and I (this year's official explorers) had a booth about saving the oceans. At the booth we had wrap-n-mats, which are plastic coated cloths that are a reusable substitute for plastic bags. We also had reusable water bottles, reusable lunch bags, and cloth napkins. These things make up a zero waste lunch.

We showed the public how they could take part in saving the oceans. We passed out Seafood Watch pocket guides and "Think OCEAN" cards. Think OCEAN lists 15 super easy things you can do to conserve the oceans starting today. On the list are simple things like recycling, carpooling, and changing to compact fluorescent light bulbs. While talking with aquarium-goers we referred to the presentation Save Our Seas, which is about ocean conservation. We explained that you could learn three main things from the presentation: what the ocean gives us, why the ocean is in trouble, and most importantly, what you can do to help.

Ayla and I presented Save Our Seas at Trinity and Oak Knoll Schools in Menlo Park, Bear Creek Elementary in Boulder, CO and at World Ocean Day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We quizzed the audience on their knowledge of the ocean by asking them questions about the pacific trash vortex, the age of the ocean, bottom trawling, and a lot more. In the first section we showed the audience why we should conserve the oceans. We explained that the ocean gives us a lot of things like food, a mode of transportation, and a place to have fun. Next, we went over major topics like overfishing, all types of pollution, and global warming. In the final section we talked about recycling, eating sustainable seafood, and other ways to save the ocean. Ayla and I had a blast giving this presentation to more than 150 people in the aquarium's auditorium that day!