Fighting Against Pollution in the Gulf of Izmir, Providing a Sustainable Biodiversity of the Marine Ecosystem and Raising awareness about the Effects of Marine Pollution on Living Creatures

Our teachers who attended the TUDAV (Turkish Marine Research Foundation) Marine Literacy Course were inspired by the valuable information and experience they acquired and shared this invaluable knowledge with their students in the classroom environment.

MEV Güzelbahçe Anatolian and Science High School environmental projects and events based on marine pollution and sustainability of the biodiversity of marine life especially in the Gulf of İzmir grew even more within the candidacy period of The European Blue School application process.

We are delighted to see that a large group of participants joined the program as the workshops , debates and art and literature competitions were open to all school students and were presented to all students with the active participation of 127 students who involved in the project as well as our sister school who attended our workshops with 60 students. 127 students have all been actively and voluntarily taken part in the process either by conducting researches to present on the workshop day, preparing the artificial reefs in laboratory environment or drawing mindblowing marine life pictures to join our drawing competition, some others prefered preparing slogans with the scope of our awareness project, joined a slogan competition, prepared slogans on craft paper and carried them on the shore cleaning activity day, some others prepared 2 notice boards one of which demonstrates poisonous fish and invasive species and the other consist of all creative art work of drawings of our students, some other students researched the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals and presented them by preparing a Powerpoint presentation with a special emphasis on article 14 , some other students visited IZSU.İZSU Gulf branch team explained the effects of eutrophication, which occurs as a result of the waste coming from the land in Izmir Bay as well as the large increase in nutrients for various reasons, on living creatures and gave information about the invasive species in the bay and the effects of these species on the ecosystem. They shared information about the damage caused by overfishing to the marine ecosystem, mussel farming and the importance of mussels for the marine ecosystem.
They told our students about the stages a drop of water goes through until it reaches our seas. They emphasized that analyzes are carried out frequently and that sample analyzes from 32 different stations are taken and examined every month. They gave information about the dredging and sea lettuce collection.
Our students gave a presentation to the authorities about the activities they carried out at our school within the scope of the "Izmir Bay Marine Pollution and Possible Effects" project and their studies on marine pollution in the Izmir Bay. During the visit, where mutual information was exchanged, our students had the opportunity to talk about their own projects and get ideas from experts about the ways they would follow when expanding their projects. Some other students were responsible from creating a survey on google platform and they successfully managed this through raising awareness with thought provoking survey questions, later on statistics have been analyzed by their project coordinator teachers.
We have observed that the marine projects we carried out in the 2023-2024 Academic year in Güzelbahçe MEV College created a strong sense of awareness among our students and parents about being more sensitive to the environmental and marine issues.