Ascension Island Marine festival 2023

On the 10th June 2023, the AIG Conservation and Fisheries Directorate hosted their second annual marine festival. The day was mainly organised by the outreach and engagement officer Lorna and the Marine team lead Tiff and the main theme was the deep sea. The festival included stalls from local artists selling their work, jewellery and other crafts, kids under the sea themed activities, we also had VR head-sets with 360 videos of Ascension from drone footage, under the water 360 footage from ascensions waters and under the sea games. There was a sea rescue demonstration, a play by the two boats school drama club called ‘deep sea adventure’ the story of Darwin, Einstein and Steve Irwin travelling to the bottom of the Mariana trench, the guides and brownies did a performance of under the sea, the MPA youth committee had a bake sale and competition stall, there was a fishing competition and Toby had a stall about his plastics project, and Dan had a stall about his shark project. 

The week before the festival Anna, Abi and I spent the week crafting to create props and costumes for the deep-sea adventure play, a back drop for stage, deep sea creatures to decorate a marine festival photo op frame, A frame boards to write what’s on, directions of where things were being held etc. 

Each of the kids for the play had different deep-sea creatures they were playing so we created headbands with those sea creatures on them so they wouldn’t have to do a full costume change throughout the performance. 

The Thursday before the festival I went with Toby for the MPA youth committee session, where we got the kids to paint the letters which would make up the banner for their stall as well as paint a picture of their favourite memory during being part of the MPA YC to put up on display behind their stall. It was really nice to see a few of the kids decided to include some of the turtle activities such as the tour and excavation as their favourites. 

The day before the whole office helped set up the festival by putting up the marquees on the pier, whilst this was happening, Abi, Anna and I helped Simon collecting picnic benches from long beach, turtle ponds, turtle shelly beach, the museum, the community centre, and jubilee view. We also collected tables from staffs houses as extra stall tables and then helped put up the bunting around the marquees. I then also went home in the evening and baked lots of cookies to sell on the MPA youth committee stand. 

On the day we all met at 9am ready for the start of the festival at 11. The fishing competition had started much earlier in the morning but my main job for the morning with Anna was to set up the kid’s obstacle course. Originally, we were meant to be based on the beach but Lorna decided it was too out of the way for people to interact with so we decided to include it up on the main pier nearer to the rest of the festival. 

We made the obstacle course sea turtle themed so the kids had to pretend they were a hatchling that had just hatched, then had to dodge the fishing net as they crawled through some net, then dodge the trigger fish as they hopped through the tyres, jump through the waves as they jumped over the turtle stakes, then hop onto the carpet tiles, ‘collect their food’ by grabbing the tennis ball and balancing it on the tennis racket and then begin the navigation back to ascension weaving through the cones then throw to ball in the bucket and then end on a litter pick to clean the beach for nesting. We also added some chalk drawings around the course to make it look more fun and colourful. 

Anna and I ran the obstacle course between 11am – 1pm timing the kids so that the top three times could win a prize. 

The Sea Rescue display also took place in the morning which I didn’t get to see as I was helping with the obstacle course but the display included them rescuing ‘dead Fred’ the dummy who was chucked off the pier. 

Just before lunch time people started coming in with their fish to be measured for the Fishing competition and at around 12:30 I also helped Emily out with some Parachute games for the little kiddies. 

The drama clubs play was at 14:00 so once we’d finished at the obstacle course Anna and I helped get the kids ready for the play, we put all the headbands in piles so each kid had their collection of headpieces in the order they would be needed. 

We then went out to the main stage and helped with headband changes throughout the performance. I really enjoyed seeing the play and thought the story they had come up with was really good! 

The festival was packed up at around 17:00 after announcing winners to the obstacle course competition, chalk drawing competition, fishing competition categories, pin the tag on the shark, guess the number of cigarette butts in the jar etc. Then on Monday we helped empty the warehouse of everything from the weekend and moved the tables back to where they came from.