Environmental awareness through art

CORAL REEF RELATIONSHIPS AND ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS THROUGH ART

ARTICLE BY NITYASHRI SANKARAN, GRADE 7 STUDENT AT THE DELHI PRIVATE SCHOOL SHARJAH

Art is a fantastic opportunity to represent environmental issues, illustrate new ideas and provide emotional lasting experiences with the potential of reaching and impacting the masses.

I participated in the Science without Borders Challenge, an annualInternational art competition conducted by Khaled Bin Sultan Living oceans foundation that engages students to promote the need to preserve, protect, and restore the world’s oceans and aquatic resources, and was an International Finalist in the Middle school category amongst Hundreds of entries from all over the world.

The competition aims to get students and teachers more involved and interested in ocean conservation through various forms of art. It inspires us to be creative and promote public awareness of important ocean conservation issues.

My painting depicted the various water species in a colourful coral reef seabed, showing the importance of conservation for symbiosis and healthy human life.

Coral reefs are important ecosystems that harbor nearly 25% of all marine species. Symbiosis is a close ecological relationship between the individuals of two (or more) different species.Coral reefs provide a source of food and shelter for a large variety of species including fish, shellfish, fungi, sponges, sea anemones, sea urchins, sea snakes, sea stars, worms, jellyfish, turtles, and snails.  The coral reef ecosystem is an intricate and diverse collection of species that interact with each other and the physical environment. They also provide extensive recreational and tourism opportunities.

An estimated 70% of the world's reefs have been threatened or destroyed by a variety of stressors, including shoreline development, polluted runoff from agriculture, physical damage, over-harvesting of fish, destructive fishing, diseases, and warmer seawater temperatures.Humans contribute to the deterioration of coral reefs through physical damage caused by boats and recreational contact, and through runoff of sediments, contaminants, and nutrients from agriculture, industry, sewage, and land clearing in the watershed.

It is therefore our role to spread environmental awareness, reduce contamination, polluting and dumping of sewage into the ocean and not treat the ocean as a trash bin as our Life is interdependent on it as well.