Plan Your Event
Festivals
Activity Stations
Create a World Ocean Day festival, or add the ocean to other festivals and have a space for ocean-themed activities. Incorporate art by choosing any medium, from paint and chalk to discarded plastic to create ocean art. Set up a work station where people of all ages can learn more about ocean science and how to help by taking action in their own lives, and their communities. Take a look at these easy ocean science experiments!
Photo Credit: Texas State Aquarium
Demonstrations
Sponsor a sustainable seafood event by inviting local chefs to give demonstrations and food tastings. Check out Chefs Collaborative for a list of “sustainable seafood chefs” in your area and verify their choices. Consider discussing how marine protected areas increase fishing stocks and the 30×30 initiative!
Have a touch tank with ocean creatures (and make sure to get them back to their ocean home safely) or, if you’re close to the ocean, host guided coastal tours or sustainable fishing demonstrations.
Entertainment
Invite local musicians to play, host a dance (to ocean-themed music), or put on a short theater dramatization with an ocean conservation message surrounding the conservation action focus.
Games
A fun and engaging way to get people excited about the ocean is through games. From an ocean awareness “wheel of fortune” to a huge game of “sharks and minnows,” whatever you choose should get people thinking about or playing in the water! Take a look at some ideas here.
Information Booths
Invite local conservation organizations to run an information booth or organize your own volunteer booth with awareness and action materials. Provide information about ways participants can get involved in conservation in your area and how they can support the global effort to protect 30% of the land and ocean by 2030. Hand out sustainable seafood guides and cards from Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch and their International Resources with ways to take action for sustainable fisheries around the world.
Prizes and Raffles
Hand out ocean-themed prizes such as free kayaking, diving or nature tours; tickets to your local aquarium, museum, or zoo; ocean conservation t-shirts, hats, or other apparel; a sustainable seafood dinner; or membership to an ocean conservation organization. Alternatively, raffle off ocean prizes like coupons to local sustainable seafood restaurants; a day at the local aquarium, zoo, or museum; and so on, with proceeds supporting a conservation program.