To celebrate Sustainability Day, local marine conservation organisation Azraq has launched its largest campaign, partnering with a variety of dive schools and universities, as well as SurfHouse Dubai to focus on the protection and conservation of coral reefs within the United Arab Emirates.
The campaign, called Reef Rescue, will see a detailed awareness campaign, including an educative presentation, along with coral reef surveys and planting activities take place. The initiative has been the focus of the organisation for the past two months after Azraq’s Youth Ambassadors urged Azraq’s board and operations team to dedicate time and resources to this initiative.
With an intention to educate, motivate and activate the local community, Azraq has been liaising with various dive schools, universities, government departments and outlets to assist in ensuring the success of the campaign.
Natalie Banks, Founder of Azraq said: “It is imperative to us that the activities we undertake are fully researched, have the support of our stakeholders and are done so in a way that is extremely sensitive to the local environment. Just the subject of artificial reefs alone can cause a range of issues with some people supporting and others discarding these as a potential tool to assist the local environment, and therefore we as a team needed to sit down and create a position statement on this subject which we ran past our marine biologist advisor and local government entities. We are looking forward to seeing the outcomes of this campaign, and hopefully making our Youth Ambassadors proud.”
