Fifteen complete marine ecosystems training at Kavieng college

By ABIGAIL APINA
FIFTEEN students have graduated after four weeks of intensive marine training in New Ireland.
The Wildlife Conservation Society, with funding support from AusAID and from the National Fisheries College, offered 15 students a field intensive marine training course early this month in Kavieng.
A trainer, George Samson said the training course offered intensive field and academic training and was designed to provide students with a rigorous and intellectually stimulating expe­rience.
He said the course modules emphasised the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems and possible adaptation measures.
Samson said climate change was expected to become critical and possibly have devastating effects on vulnerable small island communities and their marine resources.
He said the sustainability of economic development, food security and livelihoods of people in Papua New Guinea depended largely on the ability of small communities to manage the risks associated with these extreme events.
He said the training aimed to raise the awareness of present and future coastal resource managers on the impacts of climate change and equip them with practical management tools and concepts that could be implemented as adaptive
measures.
Samson said the students studied biology, ecology, composition and community structure, management and monitoring of tropical marine ecosystems.
Samson said the training attracted a diverse group of participants from the University of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Papua New Guinea in their third or fourth year of studies and other professionals of rele­vant background.