Marine Institute's Ocean Explorer's Program - Our Project Revealed!

A HUGE well done to all that took part in our Ocean Explorer's Program but especially to the Green School Committee for spearheading the project.

After weeks of planning and making, the committee finally got to present our finished project to the school.

The project is called 'What's Thought is Caught' - a play on the phrase 'What's taught is caught' - which is advice that one of our committee members would often hear at home. We loved the idea of using the visual of something being caught as it ties in nicely with our marine theme.

Our project started off with a visit from the program's outreach officer, Eoin McMahon, who helped to coordinate a visit to the beach with senior classes. The purpose of this visit was to gather, sort and classify marine litter and learn about marine life also.

Students brought the litter back to school and we set about creating an aim and plan for our project. 

We wanted to create a piece of work that inspired everyone to keep their beaches tidy and create awareness around our interdependency on the marine environment.

Students brainstormed ideas and we decided on creating a dual beach picture-one side clean and tidy (the way it should be!) and the other full of rubbish (everything we had found on the beach). We decided to attach a brain in the centre and work on the slogan. The brain has a net attached and is catching all the litter, preventing it from polluting the other side of the beach.

The idea is that our thoughts are linked to our actions. If we change the way we think, we can achieve anything! Our thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to actions and actions lead to results! We want the result of our thoughts to be a safer, cleaner and happier marine environment for all!

The Green School Committee would like to challenge you to do a 2 minute beach clean as often as you can! Take a bag and some gloves and a litter picker and set a timer on your phone-you will be surprised on what a difference you can make!

We would love to see some photos from your visits so please send them to our school email or [email protected] and we will include them on the website!