Conservation
Ocean Literacy & Governance
Aquarium of the Pacific Hosted a National Regional Conference on Ocean Literacy with NOAA
The Conference on Ocean Literacy (CoOL) was a national conference with five additional regional conferences. The California Regional Conference on Ocean Literacy was a two-and-a-half-day forum that brought together key participants to discuss the essential principles of ocean literacy and the current challenges and opportunities facing the nation and the West Coast for both formal and informal education efforts in educating the public to make informed, responsible decisions about the ocean and its resources.
CoOL featured a combination of plenary sessions, keynote speakers, and panel discussions live at the Aquarium and broadcast from the national conference in Washington D.C. Participants made recommendations to the CoOL national steering committee and, thus, to the Education Working Group under the U.S. Ocean Action Plan.
The conference took place June 7-9, 2006 and was held in conjunction with World Ocean Day on June 8.
For the California regional conference report, please click here (163kb).
For the national conference report, please click here.
Other Ocean Literacy Efforts
Since June 2005, the Aquarium of the Pacific, with support from CORE, NOAA's Coastal Services Center, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the National Marine Council's Marine Board, has hosted and facilitated four workshops that addressed ocean literacy based on the Essential Principles. The output of the workshops was these four reports:
- Public Ocean Literacy: What Every Southern California Resident Should Know
October 2005 (2.5mb) - Public Ocean Literacy: Making Ocean Science Understandable
March 2006 (1.4mb) - Increasing Public Ocean Awareness and Understanding: An Aquarium Model
July 2006 (663kb) - Summary of Maritime Literacy Planning Meeting—An Activity of the Marine Board
February 2006 (4.8mb)
Other important documents:
- Protecting Our Ocean—California's Action Strategy
September 2004 (2.7mb)
Final Report to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger prepared by the California Resources Agency and California Environmental Protection Agency - West Coast Governor’s Agreement on Ocean Health
September 2006 (216kb)
Agreement signed by the Governors of California, Oregon, and Washington to collectively address the declining health of the ocean off the west coast
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