6 Building Bridges to Science: Making Coastal Science Better Understood
65
• Providing visitors with a quality experience
• Improving the public understanding of science
• Enabling effective communication, information exchange and dissemination, and
the sharing of resources between educators
• Strengthening institutional links
• Establishing baseline monitoring programmes and data collection
• Actively involving the community
• Putting coastal issues on the local political agenda
• Gaining support for coastal management
• Advancing research
• Stimulating interest for similar projects elsewhere
• Enabling marine education and interpretation to be accepted as a discipline in its
own right
The Dorset Coastlink project as a whole and its individual elements demonstrate
that there are a number of essential requirements for success in improving public understanding of the coastal and marine environments:
• Strong practical support from voluntary, statutory and business organisations
• Adoption and deployment of the highest levels of modern information technology
to supplement more personalised methods of interpretation
• Well-motivated and trained staff (including volunteers)
• Capturing of the public interest and imagination through their natural curiosity
about the sea
Coastlink provides a model by which this can be achieved. Its success so far lies with
the personalities involved in the network. It would be wrong, however, to suggest that
the projects have been without problems. There is a continuing need to have adequate
funding on a continuous basis. Grant-aid tends to be small and interpreters are expected to secure funding as well as develop projects. Many of the publicly funded environmental agencies only provide funding on a 50 : 50 basis and often regard their role
as providing pump-priming rather than long-term maintenance of existing projects.
This approach only brings about a further fragmentation of education and interpretation provision rather than a strategic, coordinated development approach. Furthermore,
volunteers have to be trained and managed, but this area is fortunate in having a large
constantly renewed population of retired people for whom such projects become a major
part of their daily life. It is also probably Europe's most visited educational area and so
there are specific problems of managing and informing large numbers of students of
all ages.
6.8
Condusions
At a time when public consultation and participation are being actively encouraged
and considered to be a critical element in decision-making for marine and coastal environmental protection and management, it is vital that user and community groups
have access to scientifically accurate information and data on which to make informed
65
• Providing visitors with a quality experience
• Improving the public understanding of science
• Enabling effective communication, information exchange and dissemination, and
the sharing of resources between educators
• Strengthening institutional links
• Establishing baseline monitoring programmes and data collection
• Actively involving the community
• Putting coastal issues on the local political agenda
• Gaining support for coastal management
• Advancing research
• Stimulating interest for similar projects elsewhere
• Enabling marine education and interpretation to be accepted as a discipline in its
own right
The Dorset Coastlink project as a whole and its individual elements demonstrate
that there are a number of essential requirements for success in improving public understanding of the coastal and marine environments:
• Strong practical support from voluntary, statutory and business organisations
• Adoption and deployment of the highest levels of modern information technology
to supplement more personalised methods of interpretation
• Well-motivated and trained staff (including volunteers)
• Capturing of the public interest and imagination through their natural curiosity
about the sea
Coastlink provides a model by which this can be achieved. Its success so far lies with
the personalities involved in the network. It would be wrong, however, to suggest that
the projects have been without problems. There is a continuing need to have adequate
funding on a continuous basis. Grant-aid tends to be small and interpreters are expected to secure funding as well as develop projects. Many of the publicly funded environmental agencies only provide funding on a 50 : 50 basis and often regard their role
as providing pump-priming rather than long-term maintenance of existing projects.
This approach only brings about a further fragmentation of education and interpretation provision rather than a strategic, coordinated development approach. Furthermore,
volunteers have to be trained and managed, but this area is fortunate in having a large
constantly renewed population of retired people for whom such projects become a major
part of their daily life. It is also probably Europe's most visited educational area and so
there are specific problems of managing and informing large numbers of students of
all ages.
6.8
Condusions
At a time when public consultation and participation are being actively encouraged
and considered to be a critical element in decision-making for marine and coastal environmental protection and management, it is vital that user and community groups
have access to scientifically accurate information and data on which to make informed