This Year Project Baseline Oslo volunteers were able to visit a high school in Drammen to give a presentation about micro plastics and cleaning up our oceans to two senior classes.
“It was natural for me to enthusiasticly raise my arms above my head and yell: ‘I wanna, I wanna!'” said Project Baseline Oslo volunteer Caterina Cattaneo. “But, while I have been diving since the early 80s, I can not say I’m an expert in marine life and environment; I’m just a glad amateur. So I paired up with Pia Ve Dahlen, an equally if not more enthusiastic person and also a well known marine biologist, and we put together a talk about diving, marine life, and cleaning the ocean one dive at a time.”
The two voulnteers also talked about the efforts of Project Baseline and about Passion For Ocean, which is a festival initiated by Ve Dahlen. PB Oslo has participated at the event for the last two years, said Cattaneo.
“I talked a LOT about Project Baseline. What we do globally, what we do on a local basis, and how freakin’ awesome scientist are going to think it is in ten years time when all the data collected from around the world is put together in a pattern.”
The presenation offered the future generation a glispse at what is happening underwater, what is being done now to protect it, and what needs to be done.
“I’m also an amateur underwater photographer, so we paired up some of our photos, talked about these issues, and our own personal passion,” said Cattaneo. “Pia is a free diver as well as PADI-diver, so we could fill each other out and we found out that we worked so well together that we are in the progress of making something that we can offer schools.”
As for how the most recent presentation went Cattaneo said the
kids were laid back, but very interested and asked a lot of questions.
“It
should be mandatory for all classes at least once a year, to hear about
and learn about marine life, marine debris, micro plastic and ocean
pollution,” said Cattaneo. “The kids are really interested, and they
really do care.”
The Oslo Project area is situated around the Oslofjord where the waters here have suffered from pollution over many years. The pollution and organic-flux reached their maximum levels in the 1970’s. Over the course of the past several decades there has been some water quality improvement. Stricter regulations on waste, and a very good waste treatment plant resulted in better water quality. In 2003, the water quality was reported to be at is recent best. Because of the increasing population surrounding this body of water, the water treatment plants are not always capable of effectively treating water under increased demand.
Their Project maintains one underwater observation Station located at Bunnefjorden, and another Station, located near Svestad. Bunnefjorden, is part of Oslofjorden placed east of Nesodden. The North east part is in Oslo and the south part in Ås, Frogn and the middle part is in Nesodden and Oppegård. Bunnefjorden has long-term near shore residents and the water, from our volunteer diver’s perspective appears to be of poor quality. Svestad is a village and a former oil and gas harbour in Akershus, Norway. Svestad is situated at the Oslofjorden side of the peninsula and municipality of Nesodden just south of Oslo. From our volunteer diver’s perspective, the water quality appears to be of better quality in Oslofjorden.
*Thanks Caterina for the info and the images!*