Become a conscious and responsible seafood consumer by asking where and how your seafood was caught. Choose seafood caught in ways that do not harm or kill turtles. Consult sustainable seafood information networks to learn about how and where your seafood is caught.
Reduce marine debris that may entangle or be accidentally eaten by sea turtles.
Participate in coastal clean-ups and reduce plastic use to keep our beaches and ocean clean. Trash in the ocean can harm sea turtles and other creatures that live there.
Carry reusable water bottles and shopping bags
Refrain from releasing balloons, they'll likely end up in the ocean where sea turtles can mistake them for prey and consume them.
Keep nesting beaches dark and safe for sea turtles. Turn off, shield, or redirect lights visible from the beach. Lights disorient hatchling sea turtles and discourage nesting females from coming onto the beach to lay their eggs.
Do not disturb nesting turtles, nests, or hatchlings. Attend organized sea turtle watches that know how to safely observe nesting sea turtles.
Remove recreational beach equipment like chairs, umbrellas, boats at night so sea turtles are not turned away.
Fill in holes and knock down sandcastles before you leave the beach. They can become obstacles for nesting turtles or emerging hatchlings.
Tips to Keep Sea Turtles Safe When Boating or Recreational Fishing
Go Slow: Sea Turtles Below! Sea turtles are commonly found in oceans, bays, sounds, and near shore waters. Remember, turtles have to come up to the surface for air, and they can be difficult to see. Boat strikes are a serious threat to sea turtles, so slow down and steer around them.
To avoid injury:
Watch for sea turtles in the water. Give them at least 50 yards of space. If you see them closer put your engine in neutral to avoid injury.
Watch for schools of small fish or jellyfish, sea turtles could be nearby
Wear polarized sunglasses to help you better see animals in the water
Retrieve your mooring system (anchor and ball) before returning to port
Never abandon fishing gear. Hooks, lines, or nets left in the water can entangle and kill sea turtles.
Use barbless circle hooks
Recycle fishing line and discard your trash on shore in trash receptacles
Change fishing location if sea turtles are in the area and show interest in your bait or catch. Don’t cast your line if a sea turtle is in the area.
Don’t discard bait or fish remains into the water—sea turtles may associate the area with food and be at risk of capture or entanglement in hook and line gear
Never feed or attempt to feed sea turtles—it is harmful and illegal!
Makershala is a Learning by Making ecosystem for kids from age 8-16 to help them discover their interests, develop future skills and deepen conceptual understanding. Makershala follows the Project Based Learning approach as its way of teaching in which kids work on authentic, real life & personally meaningful projects.
Kids work on these projects in different educational settings, namely; self-learning; online 1:4 Peer to Peer with a mentor; or in a school. Projects are categorized in different interest segments like Robotics, Coding, Electronics, 3D Printing, Animations, Photography, Machine Learning, Astronomy and many more.
Each project is mapped with classroom concepts, 21st century skills, UN sustainable development goals and interests/careers to not only focus on holistic development of a child but help them identify their calling by giving them exposure to problems that exist in the real world.
Why Project-Based Learning
Project-Based Learning has the potential to solve many of the learning problems we see today beyond foundational literacy.
Ownership: Learners have complete ownership on what they need to know to solve a problem and come up with the best solution in the best way. It can be a concept or a software tool or a skill. Kids involved in projects are never required to be told to study.
Interdisciplinary: Unlike traditional learning where subjects are taught in silos and learners develop a perception of liking or disliking a subject. In project based learning, the given problem is supreme and it may require to know something from maths, science and history together.
Experiential learning: We generally retain 75% of what we do as opposed to only 5% of what we hear and 10% of what we read, hence PBL helps kids retain what they learn.
Lifelong learning: The most important gift that PBL gives to its learners is to make them lifelong learners as this is the most required skill to lead a good life, personally & professionally.
Skills & Knowledge balance: Project-based learning doesn’t focus too much on memorizing information, rather it equally demands practising life skills to be able to do better in projects.
How Makershala Works
Parents and Kids who wish to start their journey with Makershala, are suggested to pick one interest area of the child and then choose a plan.
Parents and Kids after enrolling in a course based on their interest are assigned a batch. Each batch has 3-4 learners and 1 mentor.
Each course has 6 guided projects and 1 challenge project.
During the project, formative assessments are conducted to evaluate learner’s knowledge & skills.
On completion of a project parents and kids get a learning report which indicates the skills and knowledge developed/displayed by them.
Kids also build their portfolio which showcases problems solved, solutions created, skills developed, knowledge acquired and technologies learnt.
Kids earn rewards in the form of badges, points and coins for their performance in a project, course and overall.
Kids are maneuvered to take up courses and projects from different learning segments to gain more clarity on their interests. This eventually helps them in picking up a career.
