7 researchers from the CIM-UVigo participate in Ocean literacy, a collection of educational materials promoted by the Campus del Mar.

A team of scientists comprising three women and five men from the UVigo Marine Research Centre, part of the CIGUS Network, and the Spanish Institute of Oceanography in A Coruña, are participating in Ocean literacy, an initiative comprising seven new illustrations that portray each of the seven essential principles of ocean culture or marine literacy. This series of educational resources may be accessed by the public free-of-charge, and aims to bridge the gap in ocean-related subjects in formal education. These tools are the result of the collaboration between research staff and illustrator Inés Vázquez, a comic strip artist who studied at El Garaje Hermético school of comic art in Pontevedra.

A meeting place for science and art

During the presentation of the series, Pro Vice-chancellor Mónica Valderrama stressed the importance of this type of initiative that “disseminates science and brings it to society”, converting “more specialised knowledge” into something that is “perfectly legible and understandable to large segments of the public of varying ages”. In turn, Daniel Rey, Director of the Campus del Mar and the CIM-UVigo, part of the CIGUS Network, stressed that “this initiative was conceived as a meeting place for dialogue between science and art, research and creativity; interaction that is reflected in this collection of illustrations covering varying topics and styles” yet all within the scope of Ocean literacy, in other words, marine culture, which comprises seven key principles.

Participating in the event was Noelia Estévez, a member of the Campus del Mar administrative team, who presented the illustrations and explained the creative process behind them. Also present were several of the project’s researchers, including Daniel Rey, in his capacity as a researcher in the Marine and Environmental Geology group (Geoma); María Teresa de Castro, from the Environmental Physics Laboratory (EphysLab); Emilio Rolán, from the Population Genetics and Cytogenetics group and Xochitl Édua Elías, from the Future Oceans Lab, as well as the illustrator, Inés Vázquez. The discussion that followed the presentation of the illustrations provided an insight into the creative process and valued experience in initiatives such as this in order to bring knowledge from the lab to society.

The seven principles of ocean literacy

The seven illustrations portray each of the seven essential principles of oceanic culture or marine literacy: The first illustration is based on the fact that the #Earth has one big ocean with many features and the analysis of sedimentary basins, in line with the work conducted by Soledad García Gil, a researcher at the CIM-UVigo. The second explains that the ocean and the life it contains shape the features of the earth, focusing on the rocks and geological materials found on land, but which originated on the ocean bed. The third illustration provides an insight into the ocean’s influence on weather and climate, whilst the fourth explains how the ocean made the #Earth habitable and how the sea is the origin of life on land, with the collaboration of CIM-UVigo professor and researcher Emilio Rolán. The fifth principle, also reflected in one of the illustrations, argues that the ocean supports a great diversity of life and ecosystems. The sixth focuses on the interconnection between the ocean and human beings, featuring the work by Xochitl Édua Elías Ilosvay and Diego Salgueiro Otero, from the CIM-UVigo. The last illustration in the series focuses on the unexplored and unknown part of the marine world and addresses numerical modelling as a tool for predicting changes to the marine ecosystem, thanks to the work Manuel Ruiz Villarreal, from the Oceanographic Centre in A Coruña (IEO-CSIC).

The presentation was endorsed by the UN as an activity within the scope of its Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and promoted by the CIM-UVigo CIGUS Network.