Rock the Ocean is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to increase public awareness about the issues impacting the world’s oceans and to support scientific research, education, and ocean conservation initiatives through benefit concerts, brand partnerships, and entertainment industry events. Their benefit concert that they organize is called Tortuga Music Festival that happens on the Fort Lauderdale Beach in Florida. All of the proceeds from the festival go towards ocean conservation organizations. We are so thankful to be one of the ocean conservation organizations in the core issue area of “Shark Conservation.” We are located in the area deemed “Conservation Village” with around 30 other conservation partners where we all have booths to help spread and share our messages. In the past, our activities have included tagging our hammerhead shark named Herman, a ring toss game trying to identify the dorsal fin of different shark species, and a game to cross the ocean as a shark without facing any potential threats.
Stoked on Salt contributes to the preservation of our beautiful ocean, beaches, and living coral reefs that identify the special place where we live. They do this by conducting beach cleanups, selling merchandise to raise money for ocean conservation organizations, and through their Ocean Conservation Day. Ocean Conservation Day consists of 81 vendors at Las Olas Oceanside Park in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, spreading the message about their organizations and about the animals they serve to protect. We are thankful to be one of the vendors at this event that has the opportunity to share our mission and the work that we are doing for our oceans. At our booth, we have Herman the Hammerhead to demonstrate shark workups.
Shark Con is an event dedicated to raising awareness about shark and ocean conservation, as well as sustainability. It raises money for ocean and shark conservation efforts, which are undertaken by the partners at SharkCon. There are over 150 vendors of shark and ocean related merchandise and a dozen nonprofits to engage guests and show them how they can get involved in saving the oceans. At this event, we have the opportunity to be one of the conservation partners in attendance and give a 30 minute presentation sharing the history and research of the Shark Lab. Our booth involves demonstrating a shark workup with Herman the Hammerhead and sharing with guests how they can help contribute to our mission.
REEF is a marine conservation organization based in Key Largo, Florida. Its mission is to protect biodiversity and ocean life by actively engaging and inspiring the public through citizen science, education, and partnerships with the scientific community. REEF implements hands on programs to involve local communities in conservation-focused activities, such as the REEF Arts and Science Festival. The Arts and Science Festival is a family-friendly event at the REEF headquarters in Key Largo, in which the shark lab held a booth amongst other conservation-focused organizations and artists/creators. Visitors are able to hear about shark labs research, learn all about the Skulls Project and kids loved our game of matching the prey item to the correct shark's mouth.