About our project

The oceans play a critical role in regulating the Earth's climate, providing oxygen, and supporting biodiversity. Understanding the importance of oceans fosters a deeper appreciation for the environment and motivates individuals and communities to take action to protect them.

Ovidius Highschool is part of the Network of European Blue Schools since 2020, from the beginning of this initiative. We applied then, to be part of the NEBS with a project focused on microplastic pollution, that was quite a new topic for us, and we developed a procedure in order to collect, analyze and produce data of Black Sea water pollution with microplastic. Furthermore, we continued to investigate this topic in the next years and to present our findings in several environmental projects contests for students, at local, national as well as European level. We also tried to find a way to reduce the impact of the plastic in our daily lives by encouraging the students to come up with an idea of producing bioplastic and integrating marine algae biomass in the process. While presenting our project and attending different events, like science fairs, we realized that the microplastic issues are quite unknown by the general public, both kids and adults.

Starting from this project, we continued to develop other initiatives related to the promotion of ocean literacy and knowledge of oceanic sciences, and the integration of the principles of respect for nature into everyday life.

Objectives

• To increase the number of students from "Ovidius" Highschool that attend workshops on ocean sciences topics, especially on microplastic but not only.
• To increase the number of Romanian schools applying to be part of NEBS. We plan to create several partnerships with school from cities in the central and NE part of Romania, far from the Black Sea coastline, to help them "find the blue" and to create, together with our students, projects on freshwaters relevant for each community.
• To expand our research on microplastic in the local freshwater bodies (Tabacarie lake, Siutghiol lake and Techirghiol lake) as well as the Danube river waters.