Over 50 people gathered for three days to attend the Marine Education and Research Society’s (MERS) first Marine Naturalist Workshop on the North Island.
The workshop provided intensive training for those working or hoping to work as kayak guides, whale watching, as park staff, or those interested in just gaining a deeper knowledge of natural history and conservation.
“We are doing the workshop to try to reach the people who can really amplify knowledge – people who are sharing information about marine life,” said MERS executive director Christie McMilan, explaining that the goal is for people to be able to share “meaningful conservation messaging” rather than just facts.
For the last four years, MERS has been providing the three-day workshop in Campbell River and this year they’ve hosted their first workshop in Port McNeill which took place June 15-17 at the Chilton Arena.
“With motorized vessel there is no doubting you have a fossil fuel footprint and you have a noise footprint,” explained MERS education director Jackie Hildering, who co-ran the workshop with McMilan. “So how do you make that experience count, where it is meaningful, and it might counteract the fact that you are making those impacts?”
Hildering said one key message from the workshop was the capacity for change.
“Virtually any marine mammal you are talking about we used to kill within one human lifetime,” said Hildering, adding “We have this huge capacity for change and – it’s when knowledge replaces fear. When our value systems change because of knowledge we can make incredible gains.”
Diana Paige, who retired to Winter Harbour last year, said she attended the workshop to become more informed about the marine life she sees on a daily basis.
“It was an amazing amount of information, it was pretty fast and furious, but I felt as though I learned so much,” said Paige, who explained that she hopes to start an eco-tourism based lodging business in Winter Harbour.
“What I see is all the lodging places are having to focus on that now,” said Paige, adding “Things have changed so fast, even Winter Harbour’s history has changed so fast, and this is the next change.”
She said she sees how that change relates to our ideas of animals. “One hundred years ago everyone was killing whales and now they are actually doing whale watching and the same with sea otters,” added Paige.
Pamela Quilodran Jelbes, who recently worked in sei whale research in the Falkland Islands, attended the workshop in Port McNeill to become more familiar with local marine life before she begins working with MERS’ researcher Jared Towers for the season.
“The first two days I thought my brain was going to explode but I survived,” laughed Jelbes, adding “it’s not just information it’s how to apply it and how to create engagement with more people.”
Jelbes added that a lot of the other participants she has met in the workshop “live here and have the background and stories to share of when they were kids – Most of them also have lived the change, who saw how it started and how it’s continuing and that more people are becoming aware.”
Hildering said having the workshop filled with mostly locals felt like “lifting the load”.
“There’s a whole bunch of my past students here that have gotten jobs in ecotourism locally,” said Hildering, adding “so you’ve got kids who are literally born of this area who are even more empowered to speak for it in a way that is meaningful rather than just consumptive.”
Hildering said it is incredibly important to have more people become informed and that it becomes especially amplifying to have local support.
“We have 51 people today and that is 51 people who are better informed,” said Hildering, who added that “If it’s perceived as throwing seeds, how brilliant is it that those seeds are going to grow locally?”
