Explorers Club World Ocean Week
Live Classroom Events
June 5th – 9th
Welcome to the Explorers Club’s World Ocean Week Classroom Events! We’ve brought together an exciting crew of ocean explorers, researchers and conservationists to take students into our planet’s final frontier. Join in all week long to meet with and learn from those on the frontlines of exploring, documenting, understanding and protecting our ocean. We live on a blue planet, come explore it with us!
Monday | June 5th
Edges of Earth Expedition with Andi Cross
June 5th @ 9:00am eastern
Andi’s job was to help businesses build their brands, while marketing their products and services. She built a career in New York City working at some of the world’s leading agencies, venture capital firms and consulting for many brands you know and love. Four years ago, she decided to uproot her entire life. She bought a one-way ticket to Australia and threw herself into the deep end, literally, becoming immersed in her lifelong passion and something far more meaningful than she’d ever worked on before—the ocean.Now she’s abandoned her home address to go on an expedition around the world. Her goal: to leverage her skills as a Growth Strategist and Divemaster to help more people who have committed their lives to our planet share their impact. Andi’s learned that only while completely out of your comfort zone can you figure out what your bigger contribution is meant to be. And hers is dedicated to helping others bring their impact stories to the forefront.The team from the Edges of Earth Expedition are taking their love of scuba & free diving on an expedition to the most exotic and remote edges of earth. Their goal: meet the incredible people that have dedicated their lives to our planet. They will share the truths of life on the road, uncover what it takes to master diving, but most importantly, they will help those we encounter share their impact stories with the world.
Register: https://forms.gle/49wC4HUXLrgJqE9S8
Diving Deep Inside Our Planet with Rannva Joermundsson
June 5th @ 10:00am eastern
Dive deep into our planet to explore underwater caves that few if any people have ever explored before! These caves my be out of sight, but they are important reservoirs of drinking water and hide unique life found nowhere else on the planet.
Rannva is originally from the Faroe Islands, she’s been diving since 2008 and is a PADI IDC Staff instructor and full cave CCR diver, and a member of the Explorers Club. She was also an invited member of the Xunaan-Ha Cave Exploration expedition in Mexico in November 2021, which was supported by Rolex as part of its Perpetual Planet initiative. Rannva’s next project will take place in Sulawesi, Indonesia, planned for 2023. She is part of an ongoing cave exploration project, where cave diving is explorative, desolate and evolves around research, scientific information gathering and water preservation of unique and isolated cave systems.
Register: https://forms.gle/49wC4HUXLrgJqE9S8
Conserving Sea Turtles Live in Nicaragua
June 5th @ 11:00am eastern
Join Dr. Pamela Fletcher and Martin Castellon from the Fabien Cousteau Ocean Learning Center and head to Nicaragua to meet members of the Nicaragua Sea Turtle Project. We will explore undersea and on the beaches to learn more about the FCOLC’s efforts to bring awareness and engage the next generation of ocean stewards through research, outreach, and educational activities. If the conditions allow, we’ll hop in a speed boat and end the event with a visit to the hatchery and release some baby sea turtles!Recently we hosted a live event where they moved their 100,000th sea turtle egg to the hatchery! As a special bonus for this event, we’re challenging classrooms to come up with a name for their sea turtle egg collection team. This incredible group of men and women patrol the beaches day in and day out, throughout the night looking for sea turtles that have come on shore to make nests and lay their eggs. These eggs are collected and brought to the hatchery, where they are protected from predators and other threats. When they hatch, the babies are released on the beach to start their ocean journey.
Register: https://forms.gle/49wC4HUXLrgJqE9S8
Tuesday | June 6th
Live from Jules Undersea Lodge | The Project Neptune 100 Quest
June 6th @ 9:30am eastern
We couldn’t celebrate World Ocean Week without a trip to the bottom of the ocean! Join us as we head below the surface of the ocean and into the Jules’ Undersea Lodge to meet Dr. Joseph Dituri! He is attempting to live for 100 days in Jules’ Undersea Lodge, an underwater habitat submerged in a lagoon in Key Largo, Florida. During the entire stay he will conduct daily experiments in human physiology and demonstrate and use new technology. Joe will be in his final few days and has already broken the previous world record of living underwater for 73 days! He’ll have tons of stories to share about living and working underwater, as well as the many dives he’s been on since he started living in the underwater habitat.
Register: https://forms.gle/49wC4HUXLrgJqE9S8
Ocean Exploration in the Galapagos with Salomé Buglass
June 6th @ 10:30am eastern
Salomé is a National Geographic Explorers and has been a marine scientist at the Charles Darwin Foundation since 2016. She is engaged in several research projects that support the management of the Galapagos Marine Reserve. These include undertaking the first comprehensive characterization of deep-sea ecosystems in the Galapagos, supporting the Galapagos National Parks in evaluating the effectiveness of the no-take reserves, monitoring the sub-tidal coastal ecosystems, and assessing the distribution of shark populations within the reserve.Salomé has a background in biogeography with a strong focus on climate change and has worked with marine ecosystems and fisheries in the Caribbean, Canada. and most recently in Ecuador. She believes healthy ocean and land resources are the foundation for human wellbeing, and her professional and personal goal is to work towards researching and implementing solutions that can counter the degradation of our natural environments, support their conservation and sustainable use, and improve community resilience.
Register: https://forms.gle/49wC4HUXLrgJqE9S8
Protecting Manta Rays with Andrea Marshall
June 6th @ 11:30am eastern
Andrea was the first to complete a PhD on manta rays. She stayed on in Mozambique to spearhead the conservation efforts of these animals along this remote coastline. During this time she co-founded the Marine Megafauna Foundation, an organization dedicated to saving our ocean giants from extinction. As a conservation biologist and principal researcher at MMF, her team focuses predominately on questions related to the effective management and conservation of threatened marine animals.
Andrea campaigns globally for the protection of marine giants from whale sharks to manta rays, using her scientific background to formulate plans for their management. Aside from dramatically increasing the level of knowledge on manta rays themselves, Andrea’s discovery of a new giant species of manta ray in 2009 was one of the largest new species to have been described in the last few decades.
Register: https://forms.gle/49wC4HUXLrgJqE9S8
Wednesday | June 7th
The Amazing World of Seahorses with Amanda Vincent
June 7th @ 9:00am eastern
Amanda was the first person to study seahorses underwater, the first to document the extensive trade in these fishes and the first to initiate a seahorse conservation project. In 1996, she co-founded and still directs Project Seahorse, an interdisciplinary and international organization committed to conservation and sustainable use of the world’s coastal marine ecosystems. The group engages in connected research and management at scales ranging from community initiatives to international accords. Project Seahorse undertakes biological and social research, empowers local communities, establishes marine protected areas, manages small-scale fisheries, restructures international trade, promotes integrated policy, and advances environmental understanding.Amanda’s groundbreaking work has been recognize through prestigious environmental awards that include the Whitley Award in Animal Conservation, the Rolex Award for Enterprise, TIME magazine Leader for the 21st Century, and in 2020, she became the first marine conservationist to win the world’s leading animal conservation prize, the Indianapolis Prize.
Register: https://forms.gle/49wC4HUXLrgJqE9S8
Coral Gardners with Titouan Bernicot
June 7th @ 10:00am eastern
Titouan is the founder and CEO of Coral Gardeners. He grew up on an atoll in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean, where his parents owned a pearl farm, and quickly became well versed by the qualities of the ocean and the coral reefs. He started Coral Gardeners in 2017, at age 18, after witnessing the alarming degradation of his home reef. Titouan brought the organization to a team of over 30 members, gathering around him a global movement of advocates, scientists, engineers and creators determined to save the world’s coral reefs, through reef restoration efforts, community awareness, and innovation development by the Coral Gardeners labs.Together with his team, Titouan has planted over 30,000 corals in French Polynesia, and they have set the goal for themselves to plant one million corals by 2025, all around the world, by empowering the local communities to become coral gardeners as part of a bluer economy. In 2021, Bernicot became a National Geographic Explorer, and he was recognized by the United Nations at the Young Activists Summit in Geneva. In 2022, he joined the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative.
Register: https://forms.gle/49wC4HUXLrgJqE9S8
Protecting Manatees in Belize with Jamal GalvesJune 7th @ 11:00am eastern
Jamal has been passionate about manatee conservation since he was 11 years old, and later jumped at the opportunity to join manatee scientists at Sea to Shore Alliance to assist with manatee captures and health assessments. In his time at S2S he has risen in the ranks from Field Assistant to eventually become Program Coordinator for the Belize Manatee Conservation Program.He was recently select as one of the Explorers Club 50 and was a 2018 National Geographic Photo Ark EDGE Fellow. In recognition of his efforts, Jamal has been named an Oceana Ocean Hero, Belize National Hero (Meritorious Service Award), and World Wildlife Fund Planet Hero.
Register: https://forms.gle/49wC4HUXLrgJqE9S8
Exploring Deep-sea Coral with Sonia Rowley
June 7th @ 1:00 pm eastern
Join Sonia as she guides us through her research, exploring how researching by the seat of your pants can often be the most rewarding!Sonia loves gorgonian coral and she loves diving deep to find it! She has collected over 7000 gorgonian coral specimens, many of which are new species to science. She is a research scientist at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), and Applied Research Laboratory (ARL). She has been diving around the globe for 35 years, starting at a young age due to her parents operating the MV Maureen diving vessel in the UK. She uses rebreather technology for her field research on gorgonian corals at depths of over 150 meters. Sonia has over 36 years of diving and commercial ship experience throughout the IndoPacific, Europe, Africa, and Australasia. She was awarded the Sir. David Attenborough Award for Fieldwork for her gorgonian research on the mesophotic and shallow reefs of Micronesia and is a Fellow National of the Explorers Club.
Register: https://forms.gle/49wC4HUXLrgJqE9S8
Thursday | June 8th
A Special Event with the Endurance22 Team
June 8th @ 9:00am eastern
Just over a year ago, the world’s most famous, undiscovered shipwreck–Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance–was found two miles beneath the surface of the ice-covered Weddell Sea off Antarctica by the Endurance22 Expedition team.During World Ocean Week, members of this incredible team will be visiting the Explorers Club for a speacial event, and we’re going to steal them for a live event with classrooms to share stories from the incredible expedition that lead to this historic discovery. Join us will be expedition leader John Shears, Director of Exploration Mensun Bound and Sub-Sea Manager Nico Vincent. We’ll explore the significance of Endurance’s discovery, why the Endurance22 Expedition was successful, and what we can learn from the treasure trove of scientific and survey data collected by the expedition team.If you are new to the expedition, check out the full selection of Reach the World/Endurance22 Expedition virtual exchange materials for K-12 classroom at explore.reachtheworld.org. All classrooms are invited to celebrate the Endurance’s discovery and ask your questions LIVE to three key members of the expedition team!
Register: https://forms.gle/49wC4HUXLrgJqE9S8
Live From the Pacific Ocean Onboard the Exploration Vessel Nautilus
June 8th @ 11:00am eastern
Join the Ocean Exploration Trust team on their first live expedition of 2023! They will be exploring the undersea region of Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll as part of their ongoing effort to explore the deep ocean in and around the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument (PRIMNM). This 29-day expedition will start and end in Honolulu, the team will visit never-before-seen seamounts and habitats this year and utilize the deep-water mapping and remotely operated vehicle (ROV) capabilities of E/V Nautilus to explore the deep-sea geology and biology in US Pacific waters. The Ocean Exploration Trust (OET) and the Nautilus Exploration Program aim to explore the ocean, seeking out new discoveries in the fields of geology, biology, maritime history, archaeology, and chemistry while pushing the boundaries of education, outreach, and technological innovation. The Nautilus is 68-meter ship on a mission to explore the never-before-explored areas of the ocean and seek out new discoveries and share them LIVE via www.nautiluslive.org
Register: https://forms.gle/49wC4HUXLrgJqE9S8
Exploring Kelp Forests with the Seattle Aquarium and ROVs
June 8th @ 12:00pm eastern
As part of the Seattle Aquarium’s Conservation Programs and Partnerships department, they are advancing the Coastal Climate Resilience (CCR) program to better understand the species, environmental variables, and patterns of kelp forest resilience in Washington. Their research centers around developing methods of using relatively inexpensive, open-source, and small Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) to conduct video surveys along the seafloor.
The aquarium’s work has developed methods of conducting ROV surveys within kelp forests, an ecosystem previously surveyed via scientific SCUBA divers. Bringing ROVs into kelp forests has the potential to dramatically expand the amount of data we can gather, thus increasing our ability to effectively conserve, manage, and restore these important ecosystems.
Register: https://forms.gle/49wC4HUXLrgJqE9S8
Friday | June 9th
Virtual Field Trip to SANCCOB
June 9th @ 9:00am eastern
Join us as we head to SANCCOB, a South African Penguin and Seabird rehabilitation centre in South Africa! We’ll join educator Alex Rogers and meet some of the hundreds of South African penguins chicks they’ve been rearing. We’ll also see the newly completed facility and learn about the ecology and conservation of these amazing penguins!
SANCCOB provides a 24/7 rescue service for sick and injured seabirds and abandoned seabird chicks. They respond to oil spill disasters along the South African coastline. SANCCOB is recognised internationally as a leader in the field of seabird rehabilitation, they treat an average of 2,500 injured, sick and oiled seabirds annually. Their specialist chick rearing unit saves African penguin eggs and chicks that have been abandoned, for subsequent release back into the wild.
Register: https://forms.gle/49wC4HUXLrgJqE9S8
Virtual Field Trip to SANCCOB
June 9th @ 10:00am eastern
Join us as we head to SANCCOB, a South African Penguin and Seabird rehabilitation centre in South Africa! We’ll join educator Alex Rogers and meet some of the hundreds of South African penguins chicks they’ve been rearing. We’ll also see the newly completed facility and learn about the ecology and conservation of these amazing penguins!
SANCCOB provides a 24/7 rescue service for sick and injured seabirds and abandoned seabird chicks. They respond to oil spill disasters along the South African coastline. SANCCOB is recognised internationally as a leader in the field of seabird rehabilitation, they treat an average of 2,500 injured, sick and oiled seabirds annually. Their specialist chick rearing unit saves African penguin eggs and chicks that have been abandoned, for subsequent release back into the wild.
Register: https://forms.gle/49wC4HUXLrgJqE9S8
Virtual Field Trip to SANCCOB
June 9th @ 11:00am eastern
Join us as we head to SANCCOB, a South African Penguin and Seabird rehabilitation centre in South Africa! We’ll join educator Alex Rogers and meet some of the hundreds of South African penguins chicks they’ve been rearing. We’ll also see the newly completed facility and learn about the ecology and conservation of these amazing penguins!
SANCCOB provides a 24/7 rescue service for sick and injured seabirds and abandoned seabird chicks. They respond to oil spill disasters along the South African coastline. SANCCOB is recognised internationally as a leader in the field of seabird rehabilitation, they treat an average of 2,500 injured, sick and oiled seabirds annually. Their specialist chick rearing unit saves African penguin eggs and chicks that have been abandoned, for subsequent release back into the wild.
Register: https://forms.gle/49wC4HUXLrgJqE9S8
