Words by Smilla and Alyssa 

There are some experiences that stay with you long after they ended, and this will be one of them. This week we embarked on a new journey of our expedition, school week. From Monday to Friday, we were at Paindane School, where we taught Ocean school with our community outreach manager, Pascoal. The mornings consisted of creating educational murals of marine creatures on the schools walls, as well as playing with and connecting with the younger kids during their recess. In the afternoons, we held lessons about marine mammals for students aged 12-14.

On Tuesday we introduced the children to these wonders of the Indian Ocean through a matching game on the chalk board. Then on Wednesday, we went more into detail about the whales found in the Indian Ocean. We described characteristics, environments,  behaviours and threats facing each of these mammals. We ended the lesson with a pop quiz to strengthen their understanding of the topic. The following day, we went more into depth about the very intelligent and curious mammals found in the Indian Ocean, dolphins. To make the lecture more fun and interactive we took the students out on the playground and played a game we named “the dolphins bait ball”. The game was based on tag. One student volunteered to be the dolphin, while the remaining student were fish that had to stay inside a circle drawn on the ground. The dolphins goal was to tag the fish. Whenever a fish was caught, they became a dolphin and joined in catching the remaining fish. As the game progressed, the dolphins coordination improved, allowing them to catch the fish more rapidly, demonstrating the effectiveness of cooperative hunting strategies in increasing hunting success. The kids really enjoyed the game, even so much that kids that were not in our class joined in.

On our last day, we finished our coral reef mural and taught our final class which was about conservation of marine mammals. We started the lecture by drawing a fishing net and plastic bag on the chalk board, asking the kids what is the biggest threat to marine mammals. This got the kids into the mindset of a conservationist. We followed up this activity with a role play game. The class was divided into four groups, fishermen, conservationist, tourist operators and government officials. Each group had to choose a marine mammal and a threat it faces, then they had to come up with a solution to mitigate the problem. The groups then presented their solution, the other students then asked them questions. We hope the students enjoyed these lessons, as much as we enjoyed teaching them and working with Pascoal.

We then kicked off the weekend with an early 5:00 am start, while it was still dark outside. We collected our paddle boards but unfortunately the humpback whales were a bit shy in the morning, but we still experienced a gorgeous sunrise while paddling. After this we completed two dives, one at manta point and the other at devils peak. The first dive at a manta was a deep dive and we saw a green turtle, eels, paper fish and many batfish who followed us for the duration of the dive. During the drive there a few humpback whales and dolphins were spotted too. The dive at devils point had many nudibranch, pufferfish and we were lucky to see a guitar fish as they are rare.

Overall this was another amazing week in Guinjata, filled with learning, teaching, laughter and connecting with the community.