Globally recognised teen says the Ocean Campus sparked her marine conservation journey

By Renée Bonorchis

29 November, 2024 - Education, Courses, Foundation, Blog

Globally recognised teen says the Ocean Campus sparked her marine conservation journey

Tahirah Naicker might come across as an ordinary South African teenager who will be writing her matric exams in 2025. But it just takes a little bit of conversation and a look at her National Geographic cap to realise she’s anything but ordinary.

In 2023, Tahirah was chosen out of almost 2 000 entrants from 80 countries as one of 15 National Geographic Slingshot Challenge Award winners. Think the Earthshot Prize, but for teenagers.

And the start of her journey? Visiting the Two Oceans Aquarium with her grandfather when she was little and, in 2019, enrolling in the Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation’s Ocean Campus Junior Biologist course. This course takes Grade 6 learners out on field trips to explore shores that are squirming with life while also giving them an insight into marine animals and the inner workings of the Aquarium.

Inspired by the course and having moved to KwaZulu-Natal with her family to live on the uThukela Marine Protected Area’s doorstep, Tahirah’s unfettered access to the ocean only drove her to learn more. She came to realise that water quality and pollution are serious challenges for the uThukela MPA. Humpback whales use this MPA as they migrate seasonally, while juvenile turtles move through the area on their journey down the coast after hatching further north. Offshore, it’s home to several endangered fish species, such as the seventy-four and is an important area for fisheries. Along the coast are several estuaries and vital mangrove forests.

But it’s also blighted by plastic litter, vessels breaking with the MPA’s rules and fishing in the no-take zones of the MPA, discarded fishing gear, and sewage spills resulting in high E. coli levels. While many people feel it’s too enormous a task to try and make a difference when faced with this sort of degradation, Tahirah thought it was worth a shot.

“The Foundation’s education programme was where that initial wonder and passion for marine conservation started,” Tahirah said on a visit to the Ocean Campus, having been flown to Cape Town to attend the Earthshot Prize awards and join National Geographic’s first Slingshot Day in Africa. “But then, when I lived in the uThukela community and found out it was an infected area, that passion just expanded.”

To enter the National Geographic Slingshot Challenge Award, people between the ages of 13 and 18 are required to send in a one-minute video focused on solving meaningful environmental challenges in their communities.

“I wanted to develop a project to help address what was going on in the MPA. The problem I saw was that the area was in crisis,” Tahirah said. “So that's where my passion for the ocean continued. Then, the project with eOceans started. It was thanks to National Geographic because the Slingshot award opened that door for me, and I'm definitely hoping to expand the project to bring it back to Cape Town and my hometown.”

Tahirah’s work with eOceans, an app developed by marine scientist Dr Christine Ward-Paige, means that Tahirah and her community can log real-time observations of marine species, ships, pollution, and more using citizen science to add to eOcean’s global data and help evaluate the uThukela MPA. By doing this, communities, governments, and businesses can see whether an MPA’s goals are being realised without having to wait years and spend a lot of money on analysis before decisions can be made about the protection of species and special places.

Having worked with Tahirah to create her project, the first of its kind on the African continent, Dr Christine Ward-Paige said on a call from Canada that Tahirah is “amazing.”

“Smart, passionate, and driven, with a natural ability to make a meaningful impact. She inspires me, and I often share her story to show what’s possible when someone is empowered with cutting-edge technology to make a real difference for their community, the ocean, and the world,” said the founder of the eOceans app.

Tahirah recalled her first citizen science excursion when she visited the Cape’s rocky shores with the Ocean Campus. As a class, they were “identifying species and learning by doing – to be like that, in a community with your peers, was special because you can also learn so much from your peers,” she said.

In the Ocean Campus office, Tahirah bumped into one of her teachers from 2019, Chanelle Thomas. Both of them were beaming. For the Foundation’s teachers, it’s not just about having star students who go on to do great things – it’s literally about saving the world.

Every young person who is inspired to care for the ocean means that there’s another ounce of hope that, together, we can mitigate the impacts of pollution and climate change. These are leading to ocean acidification, heatwaves in the sea, the dying off of species, and coral bleaching, all of which threaten humankind’s most important source of oxygen – the ocean.

If all goes according to plan, Tahirah will be back in South Africa’s Mother City from 2026 and studying for a marine-related degree at the University of Cape Town. She’s also intending to join the Two Oceans Aquarium as a volunteer. Until then, she’s concentrating on her studies and her eOceans project. She’s on Instagram and can also be followed on eOceans. Her project is called H.O.P.E. – Help Oceans Protect Earth.

“Right now, it's just about getting that awareness out there and changing mindsets,” Tahirah said, adding that you don’t have to live by the ocean to take part in collecting data for eOceans – it applies to both fresh water and the sea, given that they’re interconnected. “Anyone can sign up, so you can have anyone join the project and connect with what’s going on in the area. Their observations will count and be added to the data.”

“I’m hoping for this to be a citizen science tool that recreates what I experienced with the course,” she said. “You get that immersive experience, learn to care about the natural world, and be inspired by it. So, if you love animals, then you can do something practical, and you’re also having fun.”

Animals Tahirah particularly remembered from her visits to the Aquarium included the turtles, rehabilitated by the Foundation’s Turtle Conservation Centre, and the African penguins – the subject of the #NotOnOurWatch campaign that the Foundation supports. Tahirah was as crestfallen as any ocean lover when the African penguin’s status was upgraded to “critically endangered.”

She also remembered making penguin pledges and the impact of plastic on turtles and said she hadn’t used a plastic straw since 2019.

“There are transformations through these experiences. We can create ripple effects. It's just so important, and this,” she said, “is just the beginning.”