Given the societal importance of our research, particularly in informing sustainable coastal management decisions, we lead a range of community research and engagment initiatives that reach thousands of people every year, all around the world. We especially focus on engagement with school children, rural communities and underpriviledged groups – where the impact of our research can be most keenly felt.
We receive overwhelming positive feedback from our engagement activities, and have enabled tangible behavioural change, such as reduced plastic use and the pursuit of marine-focused higher education!
Our oceans are a critical part of the toolkit we need to achieve the global committments to sustainable development by 2030 and beyond. They provide us with a wealth of social, economic and cultural benefits, but societal connections to ocean environments remain weak, particularly in urban and inland areas. Unfortunately, climate change, coastal development, urbanisation and increasing pressure for marine resource extraction are putting the future health of ocean ecosystems at risk, but they are all factors that we can do something about if there is the will. An society-wide increase in ocean literacy is therefore imperative to ensure we have a healthy, sustainable and equitable relationship with the ocean, whereever we are in the world.
Comics: In 2018, I was honoured to be awarded the Principal’s Public Engagment Impact Award. With the prize money, I commissioned Dekko Comics, an awesome company that design edicational comics with a dyslexia and autism-friendly presentation.
After some fruitful discussions with Dekko boss Rossie, they busily got to work designing a comic about maerl – the red seaweed that is a primary focus of our research. The two-page comic is BRILLIANT! I’m so pleased with the result – it does a fantastic job of describing what maerl is, but also what we are doing to better understand how it can live in deep parts of the coastal ocean (see the Research page for more info).
This comic is free to everyone, and I hope will be of particular interest to teachers and students! Please just drop me a message using the form below with your postal address and I’ll send you as many as you need. All I ask in return is a description of what you will do with them (e.g. share with your school class). More than 6000 of these comics have already been distributed at events such as the Belladrum Festival and New Scientist Live!
Heidi L. Burdett 