Sea Partners for Cub Scouts

Summary

The Sea Partners Campaign is an environmental education and outreach program focused on communities at large to develop community awareness of maritime pollution issues and to improve compliance with marine environmental protection laws and regulations.

Sea Partners messages include:

1. The effects of oil, hazardous chemicals, waste and debris on the marine environment.
2. How marine environmental protection laws and regulations apply to various marine users.
3. Ways groups and individuals can take action to protect the marine environment.

How Cub Scouts Participate

1. Safe Swim Defense - Talk about the tenets about safe swimming, the expectation of having a lifeguard, and always swimming with a buddy.
2. Boating Fun Booklet - Print this out and passed it out. Tell the Cubs that if they fill it out and return it, they will get a certificate. Review some of the slides on a projector.
3. Played the Coast Guard's promo video with Bob Segar's In Your Time on the Coast Guard's website.
4. Hand out Under the Sea coloring/activity books.
5. Sea Partners Patch program sheet. If the Cubs answer the questions and do the activities and send it in to the NOAA, they get a patch. The big one is to do a beach cleanup. As it happens, we already had something called America's Waterway clean-up with the National Parks Department planned for next month.

Lessons learned

• Lesson 1
• Lesson 2
• Lesson 3
• Lesson 4

Resources

• Sea Partners Powerpoint presentation
• Sea Partners Patch Program application
• Sea Partners Home page
• The Adventures of Captain Cleanwater
• Cub Scout World Conservation Award
• Conservation Good Turn
• NOAA Education website
• Preserve America's Waterways -- Develop a joint waterway conservation project with a Cub Pack
• Inky the Whale -- Learn the story of Inky the Whale, a pygmy sperm whale who washed up on a beach in New Jersey, was rescued by marine mammal stranding network volunteers, airlifted by the Coast Guard and taken to the National Aquarium in Baltimore

Contributed by

John Campbell, FSO-MS, 5th District (Southern Region), Flotilla 31