Baa Atoll Manta Festival 2019
September 2019
Taking place on Eydhafushi Island in the Maldives, the Baa Atoll Manta Festival 2019 event helped to kick-off the Global Week for Future; a week of climate action led by Greta Thunberg.
In the lead up to the event, over 300 students from across Baa Atoll got the opportunity to spend time in the water with manta rays, something very few young children in the Maldives get to experience!
Photo by Flossy Barraud.
At the festival itself, over 30 stalls celebrated the marine environment and manta rays with games, quizzes, activities and informative stands. There was also a morning waste management workshop for all the school students where they learnt how to segregate different types of waste for recycling following beach clean ups on their local islands.
Visitors to the Manta Trust stall played ‘match the manta’, ‘guess the number of spots’, and most anticipated of all, went on virtual reality dives with manta rays using our 360 degree footage.
The Manta Trust also used this event to have the largest gathering of our manta family. Sixteen staff and interns from the MMRP, Manta Trust core operations, and trustees pitched in to make the Manta Trust stall, and the festival as a whole, a huge success. Check out our team photo below!
SIMON HILBOURNE
Digital Media & Communications Manager