Ocean conservation was once a far out term. As if it was an unreachable, intangible, unrealistic, dream that no one could achieve. In many ways this can be true, especially when we see the issues that surround us on a daily basis. Big impending problems like sea-level rise, ocean acidification, and climate change (to name a few) dominate the news cycles. And these issues are not ones that can be solved alone by one person sitting on zoom in a class for BIOL 420. However, we can think of these huge problems as an amalgam of little bite-size issues. Ones that are small enough for someone like you or me to handle on our own or in a group. What really resonated from taking BIOL 420 was the idea that conservation doesn’t always need to be big progressive exclamations. Just as how multiple little negative things can add up to ruin an ecosystem (years of taking too many fish from a population), a build up of little positive actions can lead to a change for the better.
Building upon my previous thought, I also can interpret it as a warning also not to bite off more you can chew. Anyone can come up with these amazingly large and unfeasible policies/laws, but theory and practise are different. You have to tailor everything to make sense in your particular context. Policies which mean well can end up having no impact without community adoption.
For example, in lecture we spoke about the turtle doors in shrimp trawling nets and how some fishers purposely sew them shut. Fishers said that although the captain makes money off the shrimp haul, the crew makes profit off of the bycatch. Therefore when the turtle door is functioning, large fish also can escape and lead to these fishers losing income. A noble attempt to prevent sea turtles from being caught in fishing nets was not adopted by the community and in the end it failed to serve its purpose.
I don’t really do a lot of introspection. Nor do I really like taking the time to slow down and reflect on my ideas. But I feel like the process of this course helped me take a step back and really delve into my thoughts. Life, especially during the pandemic, can feel pretty hectic. Deadlines are constantly popping up everywhere and assignments always lingering in the back of your mind. But having the chance to go on these field trips or even some “mental excursions” gave me chances to reflect. When writing these reflections I was able to translate my ideas to “paper”. In a sense, it helps organize your ideas and feelings. But, I think the most beneficial part to writing reflections was reading it over and over. For example the Indigenous issues lecture series, which we had to write reflections for, encouraged me to introspect and really have a good hard look at my own biases and prejudices. It’s difficult to change when you don’t even know your feelings in the first place, so this definitely was an excellent opportunity.
I feel as though, over the duration of this course I have matured and developed my skills as an ocean advocate and critical thinker. I believe if you read my initial work you can see how limited in scope my ideas were. Most focussed on individual characteristics or aspects and often forgot the interconnection of people and places. For example in lecture, we always alluded to the “onion world” where there are many interconnected layers which build upon one another. So now when I dive into a topic, I try not to skim the surface and instead I try to dig deeper. Obviously, I still fall into the same pitfalls of analysis as before, but my increased awareness is helping buck the trend.
Throughout the course, BIOL 420, I really enjoyed the lecture style. Being given days to digest and understand lectures allowed me to join the discussion and engage with the speaker. Furthermore, in typical classes I am too shy to ask questions in class. However, because we were “forced” to pose questions before the session, it helped me organize and develop my understanding. This really was the only class where I engaged this much with speakers! In regards to time and effort, I put a great deal of effort into my assignments and the course in general. (That comic I drew about Harry the Herring took maybe even 100 hours of solid work over the span of a week from start to finish.) The amount of care I put into every assignment, also rivalled that assignment. If you go through my assignments, you can see that I also annotated and added supplementary photos to every presentation I made. Furthermore, I included my “speeches” with the associated slides within my portfolio. I did find it difficult to traverse website building and online formatting. However, I hope that my Portfolio reflects my efforts. As of right now, I am very happy with the way my portfolio came out. However, next time I might change my website hosting platform from WordPress to Wix, because the WordPress UI is a bit confusing to customize.
All in all, I really appreciated having the opportunity to learn and engage with this class. Everything I learned, whether I had no previous exposure, seen it before, or disagreed with, was valuable to me. It’s such a cliché to say that they helped me become a better person, but I genuinely believe so. Thank you so much for everything!
(Ps: this class also taught me to speak out more in class and ask questions! Because without questions, how do you expect to find any answers?)
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