Message from our member – GLOBAL MET:
Environmental Posters
Many areas in the world have been designated as ‘Special Areas’ in order to protect them from the legal practice of dumping waste as agreed under the Marpol Convention. However all areas are sensitive, and some particularly sensitive areas may not be legally designated as a special area due to political issues.
The Nautical Institute, GlobalMET, and WWF initiated a project to raise the marine environmental awareness of seafarers and to develop a series of posters depicting sensitive sea areas frequented by ships and the associated environmental and marine life features.
There is a tradition on many ships whereby a wide area chart, pinned up in the crew quarters, is updated with a noon position in order to give the crew an awareness of where they are along the voyage. Such a chart could be augmented with educational environmental information that could raise the crew’s awareness of when they were operating in these areas. They may then be persuaded to better manage onboard recycling and to manage the legal dumping and discharge of waste to reduce the environmental impact
The Sargasso Sea was chosen as the first project and the poster/chart has been completed and is available for distribution to vessels. Orders and expressions of interest have already been received for almost 1000 posters. Shipping companies and managers are invited to purchase and distribute these posters to their fleet. Other maritime organizations can also sponsor distribution of the posters. The 36” x 30” poster is available at USD 10 per poster, plus packing and postage from Maritime Training Services where a copy of the final version of the poster can be viewed.
