PROTECTING THE BLUE PLANET
I went to New England Aquarium on February 26 with my research member, Misaki, and Fuka. I’ve always wanted to go, so it was a great chance for me. This time, why do we head to this place? We thought we get much information related to clime change, and it would be worthwhile to see the marine life in real-time.
The aquarium did not just keep and exhibit marine life, but also had various activities to inform people about marine issues and protect marine life.
Climate change and marine life
We are researching climate change, so we focused our visit on it. There were so many interesting exhibitions and species and most of life below ocean affected by climate change and negative effects of human actions, and so on. Many of the tanks had explanations of the creatures and information on their threats and what we could do to help them so we could study a lot.
One of the most interesting exhibitions was penguin’s one. In this aquarium, there were many penguins, and those were really cute. However, I was surprised to learn that these penguins are also running out of food and places to live due to pollution, climate change, and overfishing.
Luckily, we were able to ask an aquarium keeper how climate change is affecting Boston’s oceans. He told us there are floods due to sea level risings. The land in Boston is low and easily influenced by flooding, and there are already many people affected by it. I didn’t know about that, so I’d like to research that more deeply in future research activities.
Something I learn
Through this trip, I learned many marine lives are in serious situations because of human actions and need some action as soon as possible. For example, we can buy products that are friendly to the ocean and marine life, use renewable energy, and volunteer for ocean issues. In addition to this, there is no information about climate change and environmental issues in Japanese aquariums, so I was surprised to see so many of these issues posted. I also thought that by displaying these issues in an aquarium where many people from children to the elderly visit, it would be a great opportunity to get more people to know about them and get more people to cooperate.
If you haven’t been there before and are interested in the environment and animals, you will enjoy this place, and I highly recommend it!
New England Aquarium
Yumi Kita