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Save Our Seas - The ocean speaks out

A campaign I've been working on for a while launched yesterday. It's for Save Our Seas - a non profit organisation who work to preserve our marine creatures and their environment. 

To educate the public about the fast decline of oceanic life, we came up with the idea of giving the ocean and its inhabitants a voice.


If walking along Muizenberg beach in Cape Town yesterday you would have come across a sea shell that actually spoke. Fitted with a mini speaker device the shell holds a recording that speaks of the ocean's plight from the point of view of the sea.



Above two images: Lesley Rochat 


This morning, beach goers discovered messages in bottles that had appeared to have washed ashore. Inside the weathered bottles were handwritten letters - personal calls for help from different sea creatures like Shawn the Prawn or Greg the Great White Shark. 



In this way we communicate the threats that the ocean faces in a very personal tone of voice. It's a personal SOS from the sea.  


Bottles on the beach this morning before they were discovered.

I was fortunate to have involvement from some fantastic, internationally-renowned illustrators in crafting the letters for this campaign. With their skills they added life and personality to our messages, allowing them to take on the character of the various sea creatures who penned the letters.




The final stage of this ambient campaign will play out tomorrow morning. I'll post a follow up about that. Also on Muizenberg beach this final statement is a sobering reminder that speaks to the fact that if we as humans don't drastically change our behaviour towards the ocean, there will simply be no life left in it. No more fish and chips. No more Nemo.

Comments for this entry

Anonymous

this is the most awesome campaign Katherine! is beautiful.

joyanne

thanks for posting the link to here on flickr - i think the whole campaign rocks and the ideas are brilliant.

joyanne

Denise Kiggan

I have so enjoyed this article. What an amazing creative campaign. I have enjoyed sharing it with my daughter who is in first year at Vega. She has to do an art intervention and says she will use this as part of her research!

kendalee

Serious content, creatively delivered - very, very cool campaign!

georgia b.

what a wonderful project! how exciting it must have been to be a part of it. thank you for sharing it with us!

may i blog about it some time?

von_brandis

wish i did this!

kat

Thanks for all the cool comments. I still have to post my update on the rest of the campaign.

Alex-thanks for the shout out

Denise-great to hear that your daughter is at Vega and interested in this

Georgia- blog away!

xxx

Chris

I love it! And it sounds so innovative and interesting.

Kelly Fletcher

Nice one, Kath! Like the marital rivalry there, too...

Heloise

What a fantastic idea - I'm sending my students a link to this campaign to see just what can be done when you open your mind to possibility.

Unknown

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