GeoJourneys visits Devonport

In late September the Geolocation Journeys team travelled to the north coast of Tasmania for a two day outreach program with year 3, 4 & 5 students from Devonport Primary School. IMAS PhD student Toby Travers and visiting Brazilian PhD student Elisa Seyboth talked to the students about their respective areas of marine predator research on Skuas and Humpback whales. Visual Artist Annalise Rees also joined the team to talk about her collaboration with the scientists and her art practice and research focusing on the marine environment.

The students were given an overview of marine ecosystems, Southern Ocean and Antarctic marine predator species, mapping and geolocation technologies. The program also included a very special night time visit to Lillico Beach, a short distance from Devonport to see the Little Penguins come ashore at night.

ABC journalist Rick Eaves came along to Lillico to find out more about the Geolocation Journeys program. You can hear a podcast and interviews here.

The image below shows IMAS PhD student Toby Travers talking to the students about marine predators and what information can be learnt by looking at the animal's skull and skeleton.

Some of the wonderful student reflections on the Geolocation Journeys visit below.

The great geolocation journey

By: Ingrid Thompson

On the 20th and 21st of September 2017 some scientists came in they were Toby, Elisa and Annalise. Caite and I went over and had a big chat to Annalise about what she does as an artist working with scientists Caite and I found it interesting. Then we went to sit down and listen to their presentation after that we filled in a sheet about skulls. I chose a skull that looked like a duck but it was a bit too big to be a duck the skull looked weird because it had a flat head.

On Wednesday night the 20th we went to the penguins at Lillico Street. Dad came with me to the penguins Nat [Emmy’s mum] arrived behind us and they started talking and it took a long time so Emmy and I just went off without them onto the platform. We walked half way down the beach and I found a sponge hat and I came back to dad and put it on his head he laughed and he said “It protects me from the wind” it was funny. When we got back from the walk we had pizza I usually hate pizza but I loved the meat lovers it was my favourite. After the pizza the penguins started coming in so Georgia, Chloe and I walked around looking for the penguins we saw heaps of penguins we even heard a penguin call its friends. I started to get tired so dad and I left.

On Thursday 21st 3/4 Brett came in and we listened to Annalise talk, she talked about geolocators [geolocators are trackers for scientists to find out where the animal goes then they print it out and put it with a metal animal and a broken geolocator attached to it] At recess I stayed in and Annalise talked to us about how she makes them it’s very interesting

This is a picture of me holding a shell.

This is me with a sponge hat on my head.

This is a photo of the pizza.

This is a picture of a sensitive bird breeding sign.

#science #scicomm #geolocators #education #InstituteforMarineandAntarcticStudies #Antarctica #SouthernOcean #UniversityofTasmania