NGI and the Mississippi Aquarium Partner for World Oceans Day

August 12, 2022

The Mississippi Aquarium held a World Oceans Day all-day event with multiple local marine organizations. This was a public event so the age ranges from babies to retired folks, and a wide range of educational backgrounds and ocean knowledge. NGI and NOAA/NCEI had a booth and large screen set up to display some of the Ocean Exploration Okeanos Explorer video highlights. The best part was our location right next to the big Gulf of Mexico fish tank, so we had a lot of foot traffic and a great view!

Highlights: We saw over five hundred people during our day at the aquarium. The majority of visitors did stop by our table. We had OE stickers, posters, NGI brochures to give away, and also a few NCEI product one-pagers. Adam brought a large carbonate rock sample and a bunch of shrunken cups. I had one of our Pufferfish model ROVs for the kids to see and touch. The large screen was set up by a set of benches, so guests could sit and watch our videos too. There were several kids and adults that were extremely excited to talk to us about ocean exploration and ROVs.

One interesting thing was that the group was a mixture of locals and tourists. Many of these folks were from interior areas of the U.S. without oceans, so they wanted to hear about the cool things NOAA and MSU are doing in the Gulf and other parts of the ocean. On the other hand, we had a few folks with backgrounds in ocean science and children of oceanographers with very educated questions. We even had a group of LSU veterinarian students at the aquarium for a research project. This was a great event with great guest interactions.