On Wednesday 28th October 2020 MMCO made a presentation with secondary students associated with ClubMer at Shoals of Rodrigues.

We had a wonderful interactive time with passionate motivated students eager to learn. 

We started by a 1minute 30 short video clip about our mission that really aroused their interests!

 

Some pictures of our presentation!

We talked about the resident whales and migrating whales and other cetaceans of Mauritius and Rodrigues. The session was so captivated and wanted to ask questions.

Creating the atmosphere 

Presentation of the different cetaceans in our region

Explaining why studying the dynamic of the population  of our resident cetaceans

We talked about our activities and missions 1- Studying and Surveying - Sensitizing  and Conferences, 2- Advising the authorities in many fields so the whales are taken into accounts and preserved from any marine projects, 3- Communications with International bodies, 4- Field works (Wakashio and melon Headed Whales), 5- Environment cleaning! 

Our presentation was initially supposed to last one hour, actually lasted 2 hours - 45 minutes of presentation and 1h15 of questions, exchanges, laughter and advises.

After the presentation the question time was  just an explosion of questions about our whales and about our mission. Some of these young adults were already interested to choose marine science or marine biology as their main subject... 

Many of these interesting young adults were really concerned about our global environment and they had a series of questions about the grounding of the Wakashio on the south-east coasts of Mauritius, the oil spill and the massive death of 53 melon headed whale that happened just afterwards.

We warmly congratulated them for showing the way to the rest of the world in terms of conservation of the environment  by banning all single time use plastic bags and other similar plastic items, in managing the people that found themselves out of job because of the Covid-19 effects on tourism and employing this workforce for replanting corals or the replanting the indigenous forests. 

We ended with the short clip about removing the hook planted in Eliot's jaw and some of these young men and women did not held their tears; They were so moved by so much emotions!

MMCO will welcome these students on some of its mission in Mauritius when possible with due authorizations from the authorities.

Finally, we did not forget to mention our other great partners who have been helping us since 2013 in our studies, namely: Megaptera, Longitude 181 and Un Ocean de Vie and Label Bleu production.

 

The commissary of the environment (identical to the Minister for this autonomous island), Honorable Richard Payendee, came to congratulate us personally on Thursday 29th evening.

When we published the event on Instagram and on Facebook, we have had a very warm response and we had invitations from other countries to make such presentations through internet. An idea that we shall follow seriously!