Sea Otter Outreach & Education
The program was produced by our emerging infectious disease outreach team in collaboration with the Farallones Welcome Center in San Francisco. The program includes games and activities about marine mammal ecology, watershed systems, infectious disease, wetlands and the scientific method to investigate fecal pathogen pollution. The focus of the program is to show the process by which fecally transmitted disease-causing agents move through our watershed system and affect our ocean’s health.
Components of the program include:
- Introductory slide presentation explaining the ecology of pathogen pollution and how it effects our waterways, oceans, and the animals that live there.
- Short news piece video summarizing how cats can harm sea otters and the research being done to help.
- Sea otter specimen teaching box which includes sea otter pelts, skulls, and prey
- Items for children to experience.
- 'Chutes and Ladders’-like, life-size, marine mammal ecology game
- Interactive infection/wetlands game to demonstrate the flow of pathogens through the watershed system and the importance of wetlands.
You can read about the program in this SeaOtters.com blog post. You can bring this program to your school or simply ask questions by sending an email to Andrea Packham at aepackham@ucdavis.edu.
Learn more about sea otters here.