15 Dec 2009 Cabo Polonio, Uruguay, Central and Latin America Marine | Cetaceans
Strengthening Strategies and Actions for the Management and Conservation of the Whales and Dolphins Sanctuary (Uruguay)
Towards Community-Based Marine Protected Areas, for Uruguay’s Coastal and Ocean Waters: "Guardians of the Whale and Dolphin Sanctuary"
The creation of SANCTUARY for WHALES intend to preserve an area in which the presence of cetaceans its critical and the importance of conserving their habitat and breeding areas. The goal is to create prevention plans, to promote local community action campaigns with the technical support of local NGOS and regional institutions.
The WHALE SANCTUARY project include awareness, preliminaries actions (good marine practices), education for all coastal marine stakeholders, including authorities, politicians, fishermen, tour operators and people in general. The Right Whale Sighting Network created and strengthened in recent years has been very important to obtain information and prevent threats to whales. The SANCTUARY proposal was supported by the government since 2000 (Ministry of Environment) and now for all coastal children’s, younger’s and state authorities who declared a “Sanctuary on Maldonado Bay”.
Major activities planned
The actions toward the creation of SANCTUARY and conserving the entire habitat marine, we will be made through:
- Audiovisual presentations and workshops in the localities to address more childrens and youngers to promoting them;
- Interviews and meetings with authorities, tour operators, fishermen;
- Complete information should be provided in several formats;
- Adopt Good Marine Environment Practices: adopt by whale watching boats, recreational and tourism boats; with national and local authorities participation and support, creating a sticker distinctive called “Responsible Tourism”;
- At last, we must generate a Public Campaigns, which will include presentations of the “defenders of the sea” on Parliament, Press, Festivals, their artistic draws and legends, addressed to government authorities and the public in general.
These include the participation of children’s living so far from the coast and never had seen the ocean. The principal issue to make “the change and greater impact” are: carried on school children’s who live far from the sea, to see whales and the sea that never seen before in their lives. This can make a greater difference to the talks made before and others channels of communication. The press can generate and campaigning that big step for the life’s of children’s. After that the Sanctuary can support by a lot of schools of the country.