Sligo’s Prannie part of events for Ocean Day
SLIGO woman Prannie Rhatigan was part of an online series of events on Tuesday to mark World Ocean Day. For 2021, World Ocean Day was about raising awareness and support for the global movement to protect at least 30% of the world’s lands, waters, and ocean by 2030 (30x30) to help ensure a healthy ocean and climate. The ocean provides numerous bounties for us to enjoy such as seaweed and Prannie Rhatigan, who is regarded as one of the leasing seaweed experts in the country, hosted an online cookalong in her kitchen at Streedagh, in which she showed how to make a delicious meal using seaweed harvested earlier in the day.
Clean Coasts also hosted two live talks with Easkey Britton on Instagram and Facebook on different sections of her newly published book “50 Things to do by the Sea” and discuss some of her inspirations for it. Easkey, who is from Rossnowlagh and well-known to many, particularly in the surfing community in Sligo, read some parts of her book and talked about simple ways people can connect with and protect our ocean and about the Think Before You Flush campaign. Think Before You Flush is a public awareness campaign about the problems sanitary products and other items can cause in the plumbing in our homes, our wastewater network and our marine environment when they are flushed down the toilet. There was an in-depth discussion with Prof Tasman Crowe on the challenges faced by Ireland in creating an expansive marine protected area network in Ireland.
In Ireland we have a unique
Easkey Britton with her book 50 Things to do by the Sea.
opportunity now to have our say on what areas of our ocean and seas we deem most important to be protected. The public consultation on the expert advisory group report entitled “Expanding Ireland’s Marine Protected Area Network”, is currently open and Clean Coasts is asking everyone to get involved and ensure their views are heard by filling out the online survey before the deadline of July 30.
The survey includes questions such as what components of Ireland’s marine environment should be protected, why they should be protected and how they should be protected. The responses from this survey will pave the way forward in designing the process for expanding Ireland’s Marine Protected Areas network.
The main message from the day was that protecting our oceans is crucial to solving the climate crisis and actions that leaders take this year will determine the health of our blue planet and the security for future generations for decades to come.