MareCet brings the ocean to you; the Whales On-The-Wheels mobile marine education nationwide tour!
by: Dhivya Nair, Ng Sher Lynn, Jasmine Azizan, Ng Jol Ern, & Louisa Ponnampalam, PhD
Thirteen pairs of eyes stare back at me. They are tiny and waiting for me to say something. I am a little stumped and think about how I want to start this. I need to remember to cater this to their understanding but be sure to keep it engaging for them. I introduce myself and am immediately greeted with a song-like ‘good morning’ greeting. I go on to ask them if they recognize the animals in the pictures they see up on the wall and immediately they start yelling, “Dolphin! Whale!”, and I am relieved to see them eager to start. I begin my spiel, starting with some basics on marine mammals, and getting them to point things out to me. As I go on, the little preschoolers that I am speaking to run around the truck, interacting with our exhibits and showing things to their friends in hurried excitement.
All this is happening one morning while the MareCet team are on our mobile marine education nationwide tour of our Whales On-The-Wheels (WoW) programme. The WoW programme travels across the country, in a truck decked out with a mini exhibition “hall” showcasing Malaysia’s marine mammals and snippets of the work MareCet does. We head over to a location, sometimes public, sometimes a school, set-up and start our outreach work. The whole premise of WoW is centred around the idea of it being mobile, meaning we could take our outreach just about anywhere, and give people a glimpse into the marine life of Malaysia, bringing the ocean to their doorstep; an approach that’s in line with MareCet’s belief that marine education should be accessible to all.
But how did the WoW programme come about? Before we go on a tour of the exhibit, let’s meet the person behind the inception of WoW and hear about how it all started!
Meet Dr Louisa Ponnampalam, the Executive Director and Co-Founder of The MareCet Research Organization. With WoW being her brainchild, it is indeed her favourite MareCet outreach event as she loves seeing people’s faces light up when learning fun facts about marine mammals. Not to mention, her love of travel.
How did the idea for WoW come about?
LP: It happened way back in 2015, when I was in California, USA, for a meeting. I had the opportunity to visit The Marine Mammal Centre in Sausalito. I happened to pick up a flyer and on it was information about their whale bus programme. I was really inspired by this, thinking it was so cool that a bus would go from school to school, decked out with props and samples and all things whale (they even had whale vertebrae in the bus!). I thought to myself how amazing it would be to do this in Malaysia someday, but it seemed like a distant dream. I knew something like this would cost a lot and require large manpower. But the idea of a marine roadshow had been planted into my head ever since! Fast forward to 2019 when an opportunity came knocking on our door to apply for a small grant from the Selangor government and we decided to give it a shot and try our hand at a small whale truck! We were successful with the grant and were able to run the first iteration of WoW at Kuala Langat, Selangor, covering three locations all within one day. The money we received from the grant was just enough to run a mini roadshow, but this made us realise just how much time, energy and money it would really take. It really wasn’t easy, but we also found it fulfilling and fun doing it, and so I yearned for us to scale up the whole thing. Two more years passed and we tried our luck yet again, but this time for a much larger grant; proposing to run a nationwide tour with our truck. We felt so unsure, thinking the idea seemed crazy (and that the reviewers of the grant application might think so too), but what was there to lose, right? To our pleasant surprise, we got it! A grant from Yayasan Sime Darby. Extremely excited, we dived straight into planning and thus launching the Whales On-The-Wheels Mobile Marine Education Nationwide Tour in February 2022. Running the first round of the tour in 2019 really was a dream come true that left us wanting more, and I really am thrilled at the thought of how I was inspired by something so far away and got to bring it back home, becoming a catalyst for all that WoW has now become.
What were some reservations you had going into this?
LP: When we first started planning WoW 1.0, we were really lost and sceptical about being able to pull it off! Even the idea of finding a lorry, one that would be willing to be decked out in its interior and to travel from location to location with us, seemed daunting. Most of the time, lorries for rent are for transporting goods — and I wondered if the lorry owner would think us crazy when we ask to rent the vehicle for the purposes of a moving exhibition. We were also worried about whether people would show up to our exhibition! While the grant this time was definitely bigger, it really was still a shoestring budget in terms of what we were attempting. In the beginning, we struggled with getting media coverage for the event, which was quite frustrating. Though I thought it was a great event, I was worried the public wouldn’t have much interest in our event. We were also quite worried about the numbers we wanted to reach. Of course, numbers aren’t the most important thing, but it really would have been dear to have put in so much effort only to have no one show up!
Has it exceeded your expectations?
LP: I think we definitely achieved what we set out to do! One thing that was rewarding was all the feedback from visitors who told us they had a great time and had learnt so much. After visiting our WoW truck, some school kids were even inspired to do a booth at a flea market where they dressed up as SCUBA divers and talked about marine mammals and the work that MareCet does. We had parents also messaging us about the positive impact that the event had on their kids. This was all extra rewarding when thinking about how for so long, it really felt like it was difficult to get people in Malaysia to be interested in marine mammals or to identify with the work that we do. We weren’t sure if people would take to the content or if our event would help bridge that disconnect between the public and our conservation cause. The response and reaction to the WoW tour has definitely exceeded expectations. Seeing my team come together days on end to make WoW a success has also been very fulfilling.
Alright, it’s me again, Dhivya. So, let me take you on a quick tour around our WoW truck and exhibition! Jom!
Also, check out the set-up and walk through of our WoW truck here and here!
Outreach is a crucial part of MareCet’s work; allowing us to inform people of the importance of the animals and habitats we work to conserve. It allows us to take our research work and to disseminate it in creative and engaging ways, making it more relatable to the average person who isn’t a marine biologist. At the end of the day, the goal is for people to better appreciate our marine wildlife and ecosystems, and to learn something new!
MareCet embarked on the inaugural WoW tour back in early 2022 and closed that tour in late 2023. In that time span we visited 64 locations (including 24 schools), two islands, all across 11 states, travelling a total distance of 7,124 km across Peninsular Malaysia; reaching an estimated number of 20,017 people! Our team has set up and taken down the exhibit so many times we could probably do it with our eyes closed! Having done this a considerable number of times, we hope to use this blog as a means to share what we have learnt along the way, some dos and don’ts, in the hopes that you, the reader, will be able to replicate this effort for conservation, wherever you are. We’ll hear of some insights from the team members who were largely involved in pulling off such a fantastic outreach effort over the years.
Before we meet the coordinators, let’s hear from Ng Jol Ern, MareCet’s previous Outreach Coordinator and now Honorary Secretary, who was instrumental in the first iteration of WoW and the inaugural tour in 2022!
What was it like running and curating the very first iteration of WoW (in Kuala Langat, Selangor)?
JE: It was challenging! I think when you haven’t done something before, unforeseen circumstances are bound to happen since you don’t know what to expect. For instance, you can’t just go somewhere and set up a truck wherever you please. Apparently, you have to have permits from the district council office! Finding a truck that fitted our budget and concept also took some time, we had limited resources at the time and needed one that we could open up to feature the marine mammal gallery. Planning also took quite a bit of effort as we had to consider feasibility, practicality and mobility. Things were going to be moved around and needed to be easily packed and set up repeatedly.
In the beginning, attracting crowd flow was difficult, and not as many people visited our truck as we had hoped for. Perhaps we were still getting to know how to promote the event and target the right crowds. Initially we would just set up in an area and hoped the crowd there would drop by. But over time we learned how to spread the word about the event, and with more recently, we have people who came specifically for WoW and even people enquiring about when the next one will be!
How does WoW differ to other outreach programmes MareCet offers?
JE: Well, it’s mobile! Compared to the other outreach programmes, where we would do an indoor lecture or activities at a booth, WoW has the flexibility to travel to different places to promote marine education and spread awareness. Reaching a wider audience including schools, local communities, and the general public.
The setup is also unique as we turn the truck into a “mini marine gallery or museum” and have additional activity stations around the truck to provide an immersive and hands-on experience for visitors.
Do you have a favourite memory from WoW? What have you enjoyed?
JE: Probably the day that we had stationed the truck at the DIY Playground in Batu Pahat, Johor. It was a cute place at which to be set up in but perhaps wasn’t one where we would get much visitors as it was a little more hidden and secluded. So, we didn’t have much expectations at the start but as the day went on, more and more people came by, and had heard about us through word of mouth. Most of them stayed for quite a while and took their time to look through all the exhibits and to listen to what we had to share. It was really heart-warming.
I think another thing I have really enjoyed is seeing our truck driver start to learn about marine mammals and other marine conservation topics as he follows us for each of the events. He sometimes even turns into a temporary facilitator when we’re short on help!
Meet the coordinators for WoW!
Meet Sher Lynn, MareCet’s Programme and Operations Manager. When she’s not busy running WoW, she’s out at sea managing the Langkawi Dolphin Research Project and WHALE Project.
Meet Jasmine Azizan, MareCet’s Outreach and Education Coordinator. Jasmine creates educational content, coordinates outreach events, and handles all of MareCet’s merchandising.
What do you think does/doesn’t work with a programme format such as this (i.e. mobile)? How did you choose your locations?
SL: A mobile format like what we have for our WoW tour makes sense when we think about the goal of our programme, which was to reach Malaysians of all walks of life and locations. Regardless of whether they were by the coast, or a little more inland far from the sea. We wanted to bring the ocean to people’s doorsteps, make it accessible! Not everyone has the privilege, as we do, to head out to sea and see the amazing marine mammals that we get to see. Most people only ever get to see these animals online or on the television.
But that being said, balancing between the scale of the event and the locations we wanted to reach was something I found to be a little complicated to work with. A larger scale exhibition required a larger truck. But larger trucks then have the difficulty of getting to more rural locations, where the communities we want to target are located. Road access and other physical barriers make it difficult for a truck to travel to the location, hence the logistics of transporting everything can be tricky.
With coastal communities, we tried to target towns where communities had fishing as a livelihood and were dependent on the sea. We also placed a huge emphasis on trying to reach school students, aiming to bridge gaps in the local school syllabus which may not cover marine life, ecosystems, and environmental issues all that much. All in all, we wanted to raise ocean literacy amongst the next generation of ocean stewards, i.e., the youths!
JA: I love how accessible the truck is! It helps us reach more locations and people, and we can really deck the truck out with so much fun and interesting exhibits. Of course, the truck size can be tricky, especially with getting to more rural areas. But if the truck is too small then we can’t have as many items on display. When we select locations, we do try to think about how to reach students who would be more interested in a field such as this, or schools that have initiatives in place that may support a programme like this. One example would be WoW being conducted at the GeoPark schools on Langkawi Island. These schools are supported by local agencies to further incorporate GeoEducation into their curriculum activities for the students.
What do you think is the most important thing about running WoW?
SL: Planning. Time! Starting the planning way ahead of time! Running a programme of this scale requires a huge amount of prep work. It takes time to get permits sorted and locations approved, and reaching out to relevant agencies to secure permissions. The paperwork can be tedious to get your programme into a school. Given this has been MareCet’s largest outreach initiative to date, it took a lot of coordination. I would say starting at least five months ahead of the start date is crucial.
JA: Team spirit! I think the team’s energy is really important when we are on WoW as it requires a lot of energy and constant talking. If one person isn’t quite feeling it or is down, the whole team can be affected. Synergy is important!
What was the most challenging aspect?
SL: Finding a truck that was willing to accommodate to our requests. We needed a truck with a driver that would be willing to travel across different states, and to stop at multiple locations throughout a set period within each state. The driver would have to arrive at the location in the early hours of the morning so we could prep for setup and sometimes have to leave the location quite late at night. This required a lot of coordination from the driver and our own team as we moved along with the truck.
JA: Having to pack and unpack every day! Over time it can get really tiring, especially when we’re out on the tour for a few weeks at a time. Especially during the midway mark, that’s when the exhaustion slowly creeps in. This is why it’s so important to have each other’s backs!
What was an unforeseen challenge and how did you deal with it?
SL: Having to start the programme amidst the uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic. When we first started, the world was only just starting to come out of a pandemic, restrictions were slowly being lifted, and life returning to normal, albeit slowly. Since a pandemic had just happened, most schools were still reluctant to have outsiders visit the schools and most had restrictions set in place that unfortunately limited programmes such as these from taking place. So, we switched our focus onto public locations and changed our target audience to be the general public. While that allowed for the programme to take off, it was disheartening as we still had a low number of visitors. Understandably so, given that most people were still reluctant (at that time) about going out in public, let alone for an educational event. It felt like a lot of our hard work was in vain. Nevertheless, the first run of the tour offered many learning opportunities and allowed us to conduct an even better second tour.
JA: I found creating the educational material and content for WoW to be quite challenging. Because not only do you need to sometimes translate science-y material into digestible fun content that is also interactive, but we also need to think about how to ensure it stays compact and easy to transport. Lots of money and effort are put into our materials and so we also need to ensure longevity. We have a fishing game at one of the stations that the kids really love, and sometimes they can get a little rough with it. Because of this some of our fish have endured some damage! Hot glue gun fixes things temporarily but this emphasises the need for sturdy material that lasts long, which costs more money! These are all things I am still learning as we conduct WoW. Also, rain! Things get super hectic when it starts to rain, and we must quickly pack everything up and things get wet. Alas, weather is not something I can control!
How do you think WOW differs from other MareCet programmes?
SL: The sheer scale of it and the format. It is quite similar to our Sea, Science, and Schools programme but with more exhibits and freedom for people to explore the different stations.
JA: It’s a lot more interactive compared to some of our other programmes. Guests get to touch, feel, see up close, and hear sounds; lots of senses are involved. It also allows for flexibility; guests can take their time to explore unlike in other programmes like the Sea, Science, and Schools programme that follow a fixed, curated timeline.
Favourite thing about WoW? Tell us a story that will stay in your heart forever.
SL: I think some of my favourite interactions are with students who show a keen interest in what we’re saying on the truck, and who later come up to us personally to tell us they are considering a career path in marine conservation. It feels good to know that our outreach programmes can serve as an important learning platform or step towards realising their careers. They get to speak to the marine biologists on the team who can offer advice to these students about things like courses to pick at university and volunteering opportunities with MareCet.
There was even an instance when a family travelled to see us all the way from another state that was located a few hours away, just to be able to make it for the programme as they weren’t able to make it to the WoW exhibition when it was in their state. Hearing about people coming all the way just for the sole purpose of seeing the exhibition truly warmed my heart. It made me so happy and felt like all the hard work was worth it.
JA: I think my favourite is when we get to talk to kids at school! Seeing how excited and amazed they were by the animals we study and work we do; it really warmed my heart. I love getting to see how surprised people get when they learn about how Malaysia does indeed have marine mammals!
If you had to do all this again, what would you do differently?
SL: Surprise! We ARE doing it all again! Call it WoW 3.0. This time we’ll be focusing only on schools, especially the schools on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia that we missed out on during the first segment of the tour. What I would I do differently? Really focus on the delivery of the content; how we deliver the content and ensuring the content we have stays relevant and timely. With programmes like this, it is easy to put too much emphasis on quantity. Of course, reaching more students and more locations would be great as more people can benefit from the educational tour. However, in the long run, the quality of the outreach we provide is so much more important. Smaller student groups and extended time for them to explore the exhibition is the goal. In the past, we sometimes had hectic schedules where classes and classes of students were hoarded over to the truck, with each class only having a short, set time (~20 minutes) to explore. This was mainly because the teachers wanted to give every student a chance to visit the WoW truck, but that unfortunately meant a less impactful session for each student. You win some, you lose some! Finding balance will be crucial during the next WoW tour.
JA: I think I would give more emphasis on our schedule planning and thinking about how to better balance cost, rest, and having an impactful time when we bring WoW to schools!
Favourite WoW station and why?
SL: Definitely the decomposition rate game station, where we have common trash items displayed and we get guests to have a go at guessing how long each item takes to decompose. This game always elicits a shock from people guessing; most don’t know that plastics can take that long to decompose. I also particularly enjoy educating people about microplastics and its effect on the environment and its inhabitants. I can’t not mention our art-like installation, the Ghost Net Monster, a monstrous piece I made to showcase the effect of ghost nets out in the ocean. It’s been with us since day one and travelled to all states now.
JA: The Marine Mammals Alive photo exhibit for sure! Pictures can convey so much and since we can’t take everyone out to sea with us, it’s great that we can show them the animals and the work that we do, through pictures. Seeing the gallery up on the walls of the truck makes me proud of the work that all of us at MareCet do!
Lessons learned:
As we have done this now over the past two years and also briefly, before the pandemic, we’ve come away with many lessons learned. From the logistics, marketing, and even the layout of having an exhibition in a truck! We’ve summarised some of the key takeaways below in hopes that this will further aid what was shared by Jol Ern, Sher Lynn and Jasmine above.
Localising conservation outreach
Conservation and local context are extremely intertwined with one another. Local context is pivotal as it differs from country to country. What works for us may not work for you. We must be sure that the issues we discuss or include in our exhibits are pertinent to the location that we are in. For example, if we wanted to talk to students about climate change, but only focused on polar bears and the melting ice glaciers, that doesn’t sound too relatable to the hot tropical climate of which Malaysia has. But if instead we further talked about melting glaciers and sea level rise, we can then talk to students about flooding, which is unfortunately a frequent natural disaster that does happen in many places in Malaysia.
We have an interactive fishing game too, where students ‘fish’ from a basket pool filled with fish cut-outs. Upon catching a fish, we then talk to the students about the fish species, whether it’s locally consumed, how it’s usually caught, and whether it’s a sustainable seafood option. Often when we play this game, many students recognize the fish and tell us about how they have seen these fish when shopping at local markets with their parents. Such incidences make it even more important that we discuss whether these fish are a sustainable option or best to be avoided.
We also translate a lot of our material to Bahasa Melayu, Malaysia’s national language. We have team members who can also convey the educational material in Mandarin and Tamil too! Thinking about the language spoken wherever you are, will aid in improving the delivery of your educational content.
Understanding your audience
Just like the story at the start, we can often be left stumped on how to speak to our audience. We are not all teachers after all! We sometimes get young children, teenagers, parents, university students and lecturers, older guests, tourists from overseas and more. It really can be a huge variety in terms of the audience. Over time, we have learned what works and what doesn’t. When talking to kids, it’s best not to use jargon, props are helpful and asking them questions and getting them to be involved makes the learning interactive and easier to digest. With young adults, we can even relate to them with timely internet memes or what’s hip on social media. Older guests often already know so much but are just amazed by the marine mammal exhibit we have on display, often in awe of all the different marine mammals we have in Malaysia as they have never seen one!
All this to say, thinking about things from your audience’s perspective can be helpful in guiding how you approach your outreach and change the way you deliver the material. These minor adjustments and tweaks can make a great improvement on how much your audience learns from you!
Volunteers — a crucial piece to conservation work
Another one of MareCet’s pillars includes capacity building, and for the purposes of running WoW, we recruit volunteers to help us out during the programme. Volunteers are usually of an environmental/marine science background, and we get many a student, applying to join us for our outreach work! When they join us, these volunteers also learn a lot about marine mammals, conservation work in Malaysia, and other ocean-related issues. It’s a great opportunity to learn more about the field and connect with other members of the team, especially for those who intend to pursue a career in this field. It’s a win-win as volunteers get an enriching experience and the WoW team gets extra help! We couldn’t be more grateful for the volunteers who give their time and efforts during WoW. Shoutout to the 106 WoW volunteers we’ve had to date!
Spreading the word!
When we first started the WoW Nationwide Tour in 2022, we promoted the event as best we could using the usual means of marketing; posters on our social media, press releases, and word of mouth too. But during the first tour, we came across a new, more effective way of promoting the event; Facebook groups! Specifically, Facebook groups specific to the location we were in or parenting/school groups. By posting in these groups, we were able to reach so many more people and our event details got shared wider. In fact, there was this one time in Batu Pahat, Johor, where our WoW posting in a local Facebook group got picked up by a school teacher in the area, and she shared it with her school network of parents and other teachers, and word spread like wildfire, and we suddenly had a steady throng of visitors coming to the truck — in a location within a quiet local housing neighbourhood! This method of posting in groups helped us reach parents who were looking for educational events in which to take their kids.
We also found WoW to be a great opportunity to collaborate with other local NGOs or initiatives that were active in the locations we travelled to. This also provided another platform for those NGOs to reach a wider audience, and MareCet could also then reach their audiences as well!
The main aim of this entire project is to raise more awareness for the marine life and ecosystems here in Malaysia. We often find that even though Malaysia is surrounded by the various bodies of sea water and boasts a spectacular array of marine wildlife, not as many people are aware of it and don’t seem to be connected to the many different issues pertaining to the ocean. It’s almost as if there is a divide between our people and the sea. We aim to bridge that disconnect via WoW by showcasing our beautiful Malaysian sea life and to share with others on how they can treat our environment better. That is exactly why we aim to continue bringing WoW to even more schools this time round, so we can introduce ocean literacy to the younger generation. They are after all, our future stewards.
You can WoW too!
Let us wow you over! If you’re keen to commission us to have WoW at your private or corporate event, or perhaps would like us to come to your academic institution, then drop us a request at outreach@marecet.org.
Read about our WoW Nationwide Tour also at the following LINK.
