Reef Education
The Reef Biosearch staff have an active involvement in school, community and industry education. This generally centres on environmental education with a reef emphasis.

School Programs
A good example of this are the school programs written, organised and run by Reef Biosearch biologists. These include a reef field trip of one day or more resulting in school projects involving art, drama, biology, maths and most subjects over a period of weeks. They have now been adopted by many of the schools in this region.

This also involves the writing and preparation of educational material for these courses. A comprehensive manual for teachers and students of upper primary school level is now completed to promote easily adopted reef, mangrove and foreshore units within primary education. Quicksilver also offer all year 7 classes in the region the chance to conduct a field trip at Low Isles travelling aboard 'Wavedancer'.

Tourism Industry Programs
Other courses involve training members of the tourist industry and interested members of the community in a general understanding of coral reef biology. These are very much industry driven courses designed to upgrade and standardise the level of interpretation given to reef visitors on the Great Barrier Reef.

The "B.reef" course was designed with the idea of a module based learning system adaptable to industry needs and able to become a standard to give accreditation to operations offering higher standard interpretation and promote others to seek and achieve this. This course was the foundation for the GBRMPA and TAFE accredited course called Reef Essentials.

Community Awareness
Reef Biosearch biologists are also highly involved in community education, environmental awareness and coastal and catchment management. This has in the past been focussed by the formation of the Low Isles Preservation Society, [LIPS] the first true example of co-operative reef management and heavily supported by community, reef management, industry and political bodies. Members of Reef Biosearch also hold positions on various environmental consultative committees.

Reef Biosearch is finding a very feasible link between tourism, education, management and research. This is becoming increasingly functional as people become more aware of, and interested in, their environment. Because of the high profile of Reef Biosearch biologists with the tourist public, scientists, local community and through international media - documentaries and articles, we are in a special situation. This can only help in increasing research efforts and an overall long term awareness and preservation of the reef.