Underwater World offers education programs

Image courtesy of Underwater World

by Ken Quintanilla

Guam - Underwater World has been on Guam since 1999 and not only does it offer an 800,000-gallon aquarium with a 319-foot tunnel, but it hopes to make every tour a memorable experience that will inspire others to become stewards of our island.

Underwater world doesn't just offer a spectacular view of our oceans, they also provide education programs focused on increasing awareness about the coral reefs and animals that live in it. Manager of education and outreach Elaina Todd ultimately hopes to instill a sense of stewardship with every visitor. "Every single tour, every single program that we run ends off and begins with a conservation message of what you can do, like you get to see them face to face, see how beautiful they are? But what can you do to protect them? And that's how we focus on all the things that we do," she said.

Since we live on an island, we tend to use the ocean as a resource, so whether we're having a party near the beach or even on top of Mount Lam Lam, she recommends being respectful of our environment as everything we do impacts the ocean, saying, "Also respecting that everything in the ocean is living and so you should leave it alone, so you shouldn't take anything but pictures and don't leave anything behind."

Meanwhile, Underwater World offers tours of different parts of the ocean featuring six species of sharks, stingrays, giant groupers, hundreds of species of fish and live coral- all of which can be seen in one place, something even divers and snorklers might not get the chance to see. Todd says she feels spoiled and lucky to not only have fish swimming over her daily at work but to get kids excited about our oceans.

"And I feel like we really do have an opportunity to make an impact on the community and with our school children all the way up to our manamko', because have tours of all ages and everyone who comes here, hopefully they leave here with a little bit more respect for our ocean environment," she told KUAM News.

And during Spring Break, Underwater World will offer fun, interactive, educational activities for students from April 2-6 to coincide with the first week of Earth Month. "So we're doing these ocean fun-shops because we don't want to call them workshops because nobody wants to work during Spring Break, but they're just kind of half-day camps from 9-12 and each day has a different theme sort of centered around Earth Month and Earth Month activities and we're going to do wacky ocean experiments, science experiments, we're going to do arts and crafts, we're going to do guided tours of the aquarium and everything is included," she said.

Todd guarantees a "fin-tastic" time but space is limited. For more information contact Todd at 649-9191, Extension 120. Underwater World meanwhile is open daily from 10am to 7pm with residential promotional rates and guided tours available.