By Suzanne Maxx ©
Do you know what [wiki title=”Mangrove”]Mangroves[/wiki] are? The 26th of July 2018 is what some call the International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem. You are probably thinking what, mangroves? Our Sustainable Solutions Ocean Opportunities on Small Island States (SOS_IS) joins the UN Ocean Conference Community of Ocean Action on Mangroves today in celebration.
Our approach to mangroves is not to just design an optimal preservation, but to also explore the best way to better educate ourselves and others about the experiential value of mangroves with their role in all that is rapidly changing.
We’ve also done some replanting with youth in Fiji, along the way for conservation.
We’ve educated tourists about the importance of mangroves, not only for the preservation of islands but also as a nursery for most aquatic life’s early years sheltering a host of marine organisms. We’ve witnessed mangroves to be a safe nursery for baby dolphins and other cetaceans to play and grow. We intend to show how mangroves are a breeding ground for baby sharks and other fish.
We are examining other regions in different parts of the world’s mangrove parks and preserves for design, and how they made use of mangrove trees, with gazeboes, providing canopies for this natural arboretum.
The mangroves root system’s water purification has much we plan to look at more closely for bio-mimicry, design, and observation of nature’s critical ecosystem for public education.
We have updated our SOS-IS‘s website here: http://sos-is.org
Here is a recent relevant blog post on our World Team Now Blog: https://worldteamnow.org/blog/2018/06/21/for-the-love-of-the-ocean/