Hi YELPers and Parents!

We had an amazing day today to kick off this week’s program! It was great to meet the newest group of YELP leaders, we can't wait to see them learn about and tackle ocean issues throughout the week!

What did we do today?

• · We began the day by playing a fun game to get to know a little bit more about each other
• · Our youth leaders worked together to create a community contract with guidelines we’ll all be abiding by for the week
• · We introduced one of our leadership programs, in which we’ll be designing a game and skit to present to the younger Aqua Campers later in the week. The ocean issue we chose to talk about is noise pollution
• · Afterwards, the YELPers spent the rest of their morning getting to know the aquarium, from the building itself to the animals and conservation messages hidden throughout the galleries!
• · We were lucky enough to spend the whole afternoon with a member of the mobile programs team, who gave us an amazing behind the scenes tour of the Aqua Van! We got to see and hold an otter pelt, arctic fox fur and even a dolphin skull, as well as learn about what it takes to run a mobile program at a school or festival. After that our special guest let us get up close and personal with some of the animals that are transported in the van, we even got to feed them some squid!

Questions to ask your YELPers

1. 1. What is one new thing you learned about our conservation work at the Vancouver Aquarium during your gallery exploration?
2. 2. What are some possible issues the mobile programs team has to deal with when transporting animals? How do they respond to these issues?

Resources:

• · Read some Ocean Wise Stories to be inspired and learn about storytelling as a tool to connect to our oceans: https://ocean.org/stories/
• · Check out this TED talk (which was in Vancouver!) for some more information about noise pollution:

Thanks for a great day leaders! We look forward to the rest of the week!