PRESS RELEASE - for immediate release, Friday 28 February 2014

As Clear As Mud - Photo Competition And New Shore Guides For Seaweek

This weekend sees the start of NZAEE Seaweek, New Zealand’s annual, national week about the sea. Running from 1-9 March there are 147 registered events around the country, including the National Launch on Auckland’s waterfront.

The theme for NZAEE’s Seaweek 2014 is “Our fragile, finite taonga - be alert to the fragility of the marine environment and its treasures. Kia mataara! Tiakina te au o te moana, he kōpīpī tōna”. The theme highlights how precious this amazing resource is that we call the sea.

The public are being encouraged to use Instagram to photograph their Seaweek experience as part of a new competition for 2014. Using the hashtag #seaweek2014 all photos uploaded during NZAEE Seaweek will be included and the best will win a prize.

The University of Otago’s New Zealand Marine Studies Centre is launching a new Sandy & Muddy Shore Guide this weekend, continuing its hugely popular series of guides to the diversity of life found on our shores.

Sponsored by Mobil Oil New Zealand Ltd, the free Sandy & Muddy Shore Guide is being launched on 2 March in Auckland as part of the opening of NZAEE Seaweek 2014 (www.seaweek.org.nz). The guide’s photographs help identify 100 common plants and animals living on New Zealand's sandy and muddy shores and estuaries.

An initial printing of 20,000 each of Northern and Southern versions of the Sandy & Muddy Shore Guide will be distributed throughout the country and to all New Zealand schools during NZAEE Seaweek.

Both the Sandy & Muddy Shore Guide and the Rocky Shore Guide contribute to the wider Marine Metre Squared project, a ‘citizen science’ project that encourages the public to pick a patch of the shore and, with the help of information found on the project website, www.mm2.net.nz, survey the biodiversity within a one metre square area.

ENDS

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