The project course changed its format due to the Corona virus pandemic. In accordance with the governmental regulations and the University of Helsinki guidelines the course moved online, and so did The Grey Seals. Our team, Anna, Elli, Emmi, Ilona, & Salla, all either ECGS or AGERE students, have become model citizens in social distancing. We keep in touch via WhatsApp at all hours of the day and talk and share our work in Teams. Every week we get workshop instructions from the course pages, and support and guidance from tutors in Zoom meetings.
The topic of our project is how to reduce underwater noise pollution caused by leisure boating in the Baltic Sea, and we are joining forces with the Baltic Sea Challenge, organized by the cities of Helsinki and Turku. Underwater noise caused by human activity has abundant negative effects on the biota and ecosystems of rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans.
We had workshops to brainstorm ideas and researched for information about our topic, and today our group had a Teams meeting with our partner, Baltic Sea Challenge Coordinator Mari Joensuu to discuss our project. We discussed and planned many possible ways to approach our problem and together decided towards an information campaign to spread the knowledge about the damage of underwater noise. We are planning to make a social media campaign, as well as a leaflet and a poster to be distributed to the boating community.
Meeting up with the project partner was important and fruitful at this stage of project work. Brainstorming and discussing together with our partner developed new ideas and pushed the project forward and getting tips, ideas and targets from the partner moved us closer to the actual product of this whole course. Also, lessons were learned when getting knowledge from a person handling Baltic Sea issues on a daily basis. For example, not to use the oh so cute and fluffy grey seal as a mascot for the social media campaign as it divides opinions throughout our target audience. Who would’ve thought about that!