by Pierre Demol, Curator
The public Aquarium of Brussels is located near the Basilique Brussels landmark. It works with many schools and youth groups and regularly organises guided tours to introduce the young public to the underwater world, its creatures and the need to protect freshwater and marine environments.
This year's contribution to World Oceans Day, 8 June, and a response to the invitation of Mundus maris to find names for its babyfish mascots was to focus the awareness activities during June and July specifically on to the need to let the babyfish grow to maturity as a key measure to keep and even restore marine ecosystems to a healthy state.
Dozens of kids made suggestions for names for the mascots after being introduced to the challenges of overfishing and nature conservation. It's not as easy though as in a school to keep in touch with the young visitors afterwards to organise further follow-up, but most kids were shocked when they learnt that at current rates of overfishing many of the fisheries feeding us today will be gone in forty years time.
So, we are happy to have participated and seized the opportunity to get basic information to the young visitors and engaged them in thinking about these serious challenges and what to do about them.