SOA Pacific Islands is proposing to organize their second Regional Youth Conference which will target youth ocean leaders/individuals from all over the Pacific to participate in the Conference. They will host the conference physically in Fiji and have youth participants from other Pacific Island Countries join in virtually for a 2-day session on Ocean Health & Sustainability. They will then host a mangrove planting and beach clean-up activities in at least 6-10 PICs as follow-up to the conference in the same week. The conference will be lined up together with the Regional Conference of Youth and SOA Pacific Hub will lead the sessions on Ocean with the overall team, a outcome document will be drafted and later presented to delegates from COP26.

SOA Romania and NGO Mare Nostrum used a research sailing vessel to collect data among the Romanian coastal waters. The two indicators researched were cetaceans (a bioindicator) and marine debris/litter (a pressure indicator). Through press releases and social media, they shared their results at local and national levels with over 4,000 people to inform national authorities and civil initiatives working towards coastal management, conservation, and more.

Twenty indigenous youth from Alor have been selected as Thresher Shark Conservation Champions by the Thresher Shark Indonesia organization and have developed a pilot project to establish a waste management system from the village to the district level since that currently does not exist, leading many villagers to throw waste in coastal areas. This project will expand the waste management system to 3 villages in close collaboration with stakeholders.

In this project, Reef Support and Indonesia Biru Foundation work together to install the first coral lab in the Central Indonesia region. Funding for this project will go towards building and setting up the coral lab, farming the first 1,000 corals, establishing a marketing campaign, and developing a scalable business model.

This project will visit and film 7 islands of the Seychelles to highlight and document biodiversity, island and marine conservation initiatives and challenges, marine protected areas and research. Seychellois will be interviewed and featured and the videos will be translated into the 3 official Seychelles languages.

20 college students are trained as STEM instructors to educate primary school students about marine conservation, piloting archiREEF’s new initiative to integrate standing curricula about marine science in Hong Kong classrooms to ensure the next generation stewards the reef regeneration activities of archiREEF.

Fulbright Scholar Emme Christie will lead the production of a JCCYC podcast and social media series on marine ecology, environmental impact assessments, and climate change, targeting Caribbean youth and relevant issues.

This will be a continuation of the same data journalism training that Gideon and SOA Ghana conducted last year, which successfully trained 15 journalists that published articles spotlighting illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing activities as well as marine pollution and its dangers to the ocean and society. This year he will do the same; conducting a training built around expert mentorship from 4 expert journalists. The ultimate objective is to influence ocean-related policy decisions by elevating ocean discussions to the top of the national agenda. The project will also deploy a digital campaign involving 10 short videos and 20 infographics to promote the articles and to educate residents across West Africa on the dangers of marine pollution, and improve practices of waste management. The digital campaign is expected to reach 100,000 people online.

Rumah Inspirasi Bontang is a 3-part solution to tackle plastic pollution in Berbas Pantai, East Kalimantan, Indonesia. The 3 parts are: 1) A “Coastal School” education program, targeting adolescents in their district; 2) A facilitated workshop on how to process waste, and 3) establishing a community-operated Waste Bank.