This year, during the WDR-Maus-Türöffner-Tag, the children embarked on a search for a particularly valuable treasure—and they found it with us. The treasure hunt began with the prompt: "We are looking for Christina! You must find her!" Indeed, the children succeeded. Christina is a dugong (Dugong dugon), also known as a sea cow, and lives in Mozambique. She is probably the most well-known dugong there and serves as an ambassador for her species, one of the few surviving sea cows in the Indian Ocean, making her extremely important for the marine ecosystem. Christina and her conspecifics feed on seagrass, promoting its robust regrowth, which represents a significant contribution against climate change. The children discovered Christina during our VR dive in Mozambique, filmed by Lukas Müller (thank you!). Following this dive, and armed with extensive knowledge on marine ecosystems, fisheries, ocean plastics, shark jaws, and anatomy, they entered the water to meet our "Haidemarie": an introductory dive with a three-metre great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias)—not a live one, of course, but impressive nonetheless.
The WDR was on-site live this time, conducted interviews, and mentioned us on Lokalzeit (from minute 14:06). Thank you, dear Maus, click, click!
And thanks to our wonderful team of presenters! Eight ElasmOcean members and two swim coaches from Sharkys Sportsclub rocked the day. Thanks also to Martin Becker, who repeatedly provides his Sharky Sportsclub as an excellent venue.
The link to the WDR-Lokalzeit: Lokalzeit-Geschichten : Türen auf mit der Maus! | ARD Mediathek (Starting at minute 14:06, brief but highly engaging!)
