The operational activity and the material it generates will be produced continuously (both on board and on shore) and distributed via the BOW interactive online platform. As well as producing material to engage with the general public, Blue Ocean Watch focuses attention on creating appropriate, useful and relevant material for specific educational audiences:
Universities & High-Schools
As part of their core curriculum and to raise awareness and present career opportunities in oceanography and marine biology.
Primary Schools & Pre-Schools
To sow the seeds of awareness and personal responsibility and sensitise the very young in how to respect our environment.
Social Media
Regular updates with photos and short messages about the undersea world, research being undertaken by BOW and why, innovative solutions around the globe, and local stories about communities who have adjusted their lives to reduce negative impact or to deal with climate related changes. It’s important that messages are designed to bring awareness and convey to every individual the fact that they can make a change.
Blue Ocean Watch is the only organisation in the world with the objective to gather oceanic research information on a global scale, assimilate and translate it into potential solutions and create educational material for every age. To this end we are engaging with the marine research academic community and are gathering terrific support for the endeavour from all corners of the globe and it’s clear there’s a real hunger for these activities both within the scientific and education communities as well as the wider general public. We believe this is the best way to enable real change.
Not simply a repository of videos, the BOW Platform is Blue Ocean Watch’s public facing edge and acts as the portal connecting our content and activities with researchers, teachers, students and the wider general public. The focus is on providing an accessible, audience appropriate and above all engaging user experience initially through the BOW website and subsequently expanding to native mobile apps with enhanced functionality as well as Virtual and Augmented Reality.
BOW content is browsable, searchable and for educators who sign up for a BOW account, curatable. We want to do everything we can to support access to meaningful, actionable and curriculum relevant data and media. This does not stop at only material generated by Blue Ocean and we intend to work with other projects and organisations generating similar themed content and act as one of their distribution platforms making their content available via BOW.
With an end goal of finding solutions, promoting innovation, delivering educational material and videos for social media to all age groups, Blue Ocean Watch incorporates three key operational components:
The Blue Ocean Watch fleet
Several research boats of between 16m – 20m operate around the world each one with scientist and students, all necessary scientific equipment, wet and dry labs, video production facilities, underwater filming equipment and personnel. Their travels and work are documented and filmed.
The Blue Ocean Watch Roaming Teams
BOW production units will continually engage with, travel to and film marine projects around the world sending back material and data to the onshore think-tank/creative hubs.
The Blue Ocean Watch Hub
The on shore based operations hubs serving as ‘Think Tanks’ and production houses are interfaces between science and the people. They coordinate and refine the information and material gathered to highlight challenges facing researchers and investigate potential solutions to the many problems facing the ocean and provide dissemination material from their findings. All of this will be packaged into an ever-growing suite of curriculum appropriate educational material for four age groups – pre-school, primary, high school, university and for social media.
