Ocean literacy and ocean governance have finally come of age, with increasing efforts being embarked upon to increase the accessibility to the marine domain to as many strata of society as possible, broadening awareness about the submerged world beyond that held by conventional actors such as SCUBA divers, fishers and boat owners. The brisk momentum currently in favour of ocean literacy has been spearheaded by the UN declaration of the 2021-2030 decade as one dedicated to the ocean sciences, as well as by high-profile commitments by influential international institutions, including the EU Commission, which has assigned one of its five Horizon Europe Mission Boards to ‘Health Oceans, Seas, Coastal and Inland Waters’.
Besides the high-level promotion of ocean-related thematics, more grassroots-oriented initiatives have made it to the fore, espousing technological advances to literally project the assets of the submerged world to the layman who might not necessarily consider himself a sea buff. For instance, earlier this week, our research team at the Department of Geosciences at the University of Malta, through its participation within the HARMONY project, inaugurated the first-ever underwater CCTV camera installed locally, through a symbolic event organised within the Malta National Aquarium. The facility will stream live footage captured on a continuous basis within one of the aquarium’s tanks and will project such footage through a dedicated social media (YouTube) platform as well as through a number of monitors located within the aquarium itself and within the University of Malta. The plan is for the same installation to be transferred to the marine environment within the nearshore waters contiguous to the aquarium itself, towards late May/early June once clement weather establishes itself once again. This so as not to compromise the investment as a result of exposure to the elements and thus availing of the sheltered environment of the aquarium during the autumn-spring period.
The installation of the underwater CCTV camera is just one of an array of upcoming ocean literacy promotion initiatives that our research team is planning within a sequel to the HARMONY project – CORALLO – which has just kicked off and which will run till May 2023. Besides the University of Malta, ERA and Heritage Malta are also partners within the CORALLO project. Similarly, through the PANACEA project, our research team inaugurated the first local visitors’ centre within a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in Dwejra, Gozo, in March 2013, and has developed a total of five landmark underwater documentaries featuring different Maltese MPAs, besides managing a total of three ongoing citizen science campaigns.
The HARMONY project is funded within the framework of the Interreg VI-A Italia-Malta 2014-2020 Programme. Besides the University of Malta, the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA) and the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture (DFA) are partners in the project, running till the end of February 2021. More details about the project are found at www.harmony-italiamalta.eu.
Did you know?
• When the moon is at its furthest distance from the Earth in orbit, there is enough space between the two to fit in all the other planets in our solar system. And Pluto.
• Wisdom-tooth prevalence is dropping as humans experience what some scientists are calling a ‘microevolution’.
• Pepsi’s inventor originally thought it could be used to ease indigestion, the scientific name for which is‘dyspepsia’, which is where the product’s name comes from.
• More people are learning Irish on Duolingo than there are native Irish speakers.
• Some people have a mutated gene that means they interpret fishy smells as a pleasant aroma of caramel, potato or rose.
For more trivia see: www.um.edu.mt/think
Sound bites
• Humans are born with a part of the brain that is prewired to be receptive to seeing words and letters, setting the stage at birth for people to learn how to read, a new study suggests. Analysing brain scans of newborns, researchers found that this part of the brain – called the ‘visual word form area’ (VWFA) – is connected to the language network of the brain. “That makes it fertile ground to develop a sensitivity to visual words – even before any exposure to language,” said Zeynep Saygin, senior author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at The Ohio State University.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201022125525.htm
• We know that the coronavirus behind the COVID-19 crisis lived harmlessly in bats and other wildlife before it jumped the species barrier and spilled over to humans. Now, researchers at Duke University have identified a number of ‘silent’ mutations in the roughly 30,000 letters of the virus’s genetic code that helped it thrive once it made the leap – and possibly helped set the stage for the global pandemic. The subtle changes involved how the virus folded its RNA molecules within human cells.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201016122403.htm
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