Once again EcoOcean has been busy for the past year. Most of the organizations activities
involved the R/V "Mediterranean Explorer" and our educational center "Megalim".
The Mediterranean Explorer continued to support ongoing and new research programs.
As we have for the past 3 years we continued our work as the main research vessel
for a few research laboratories. For example the continued support for programs
held by Dr. Berman–Frank of Bar Ilan University, Dr.Oded Beja from the Technion-Israel
Institute of Technology and Prof. S. Beer and his students in the Botany department
at the Tel-Aviv University.
We preformed preliminary surveys with our SeaBotix LBV 200 Mini ROV for the "Israeli
Nature and Park Authority" and are happy to report that this work has generated
a much wider program for the coming year that will hopefully give the planning authorities
a better picture on what is happening on the Sea floor off the Israeli coast and
will help to create larger sanctuaries protected by law for the coastal marine habitat.
It is important to remark that these surveys were carried out as part of a course
in marine applied sciences held at the Marine School of sciences which is a faculty
at the Ruppin Academic Center.
Our own Dr. M Rosenfeld continued Monitoring Israeli Seashores as part of our MEMPHIS-
program. This program is a collaboration between EcoOcean and the "Marine School
of Sciences" as part of the course in marine applied sciences that Dr. Rosenfeld
teaches at the collage.
The "Mediterranean Explorer" kept going out to sea as a teaching platform for students
from the different academic institutes in Israel. Once again the "Marine School
of sciences" took full advantage of the facilities the "Mediterranean Explorer"
has to offer and more than 450 students participated in courses on board the vessel.
Tel–Aviv University also sent students to the Mediterranean Explorer as did other
collages and teacher seminars.
More than a 100 School students who are involved in Marine Education programs as
part of Their matriculation studies sailed on board the Mediterranean Explorer and
learnt about some of the methods that are used by scientists to conduct Oceanographic
Research.
We also hosted many groups of children, grownups and even IDF personals onboard
in order to allow them to learn about the ship and our need in the protection of
the marine environment.
Megalim is an educational center located within the premises of the marine school
of Mevoot Yam, Michmoret. The center has been running for its second year with various
educational activities mostly to school kids and teachers. These activities included
daily beach tours, marine cruises, lectures about the coastal and marine environment
and marine zoology labs.
The center has also been running and developing educational research projects on
biological and environmental issues on the rocky shore, the sandy shore, the estuarine
environment and the open sea. These educational researches are carried out as part
of the biology, environmental and marine sciences which are subjects in the matriculation
curriculum set by the Ministry of Education.
The "Along the Sea" project, a cooperation between EcoOcean and the 'Green Network'
of the Heschel Center and Karev Educational Initiative, was continued for its fourth
year. This year approximately 300 kids participating in the project visited the
Megalim center and learnt about the marine and coastal environment through lectures,
beach tours and our lab facilities. The participation of EcoOcean in the Ministry
of Environment's "clean Beach" project was also continued. This cooperation includes
free- of-charge lectures about the coastal and marine environment to schools and
other institutes, and guidance to schools who wish to participate in the project
and teach their pupils about coastal issues.
In order to achieve our goal to approach and influence as many schools and students
as possible, we cooperate with many other organizations and institutes dealing with
environmental education such as "The Nature and National Parks Authority", "The
Institute for Marine Mammals Research And Conservation" (IMMRAC) and "Clean Up Israel"
we also seek to cooperate with other organizations and develop new cooperative projects
for the coming months.