Support environmental education with every swipe of your MySchool | MyVillage | MyPlanet card
Want to know the easiest way to support our conservation and education work? The Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation is an official beneficiary of the My Planet initiative. That means you can support our education, conservation and research work with every swipe of your card – at no cost to you!
Making a contribution for a good cause doesn't have to cost you anything. Now you can help make environmental education accessible to children in Cape Town's communities and support active conservation and welfare of vulnerable marine life, like Cape fur seals and endangered turtles, in our waters - simply swiping your MySchool | MyVillage | MyPlanet card with your purchase can help us continue to make a real difference.
Participating vendors include Woolworths, Engen, loot.co.za, and many other stores that you can find in your area here.
What will your contributions be supporting?
The Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation is a registered public benefit organisation that forms the core of the Aquarium's environmental education and conservation efforts. Here are a few of the activities of the Foundation need your support:
Education outreach
Not only does the Aquarium carry out environmental education in its Discovery Centre classrooms, where subsidised school groups receive hands-on lessons from our team of qualified educators. The Oceans in Motion outreach vehicle is a mobile classroom, fully fitted with a portable aquarium! Outreach teacher Thabo Sabeko takes lessons about the life on the Cape coast to schools - often giving these children their first ever contact with living sea life.
The Smart Living outreach vehicle is also a fully stocked mobile classroom taking lessons about sustainable energy, the importance of biodiversity, water usage and responsible waste management to school children. Passionate educator Anzio Abels modifies his lesson for children of all ages and designs it to perfectly fit with the school curriculum.
The Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation's fantastic environmental Puppet Stories are on the road every day to bring exciting characters and valuable lessons to children across the Cape. We love to reach Foundation Phase learners who aren't able to come to us with our travelling puppet shows and accompanying books. I Love Turtles, Keep the Beach Clean, My Wild Pets, and Water Cycle Adventure all provide fun edu-tainment for little ones and has become a way for us to share the Aquarium's vision and mission with the future leaders of our country. Our mobile puppet show to thousands of Foundation Phase learners each year. Imagine if we could quadruple that number! Your support will make that a reality.
Sea turtle rescue, rehabilitation and release
The Two Oceans Aquarium Turtle Rescue Programme is a multi-faceted programme that serves as the Western Cape's largest conservation programme, rehabilitating sea turtles that become stranded on our coast, nursing them back to health and returning them to the wild.
Part of this programme has been the establishment of a Turtle Rescue Network in the coastal communities of the Southern Cape to form a Turtle Rescue Network that can support community members who find stranded turtles and help to transport them to our rehabilitation centre. We work with schools and community organisations in these areas to help educate people about what to do if they find a stranded animal - after all, members of the public are the first line of rescue that these animals have.
The Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation also runs an active sea turtle rehabilitation centre at the Two Oceans Aquarium. Its primary goal is to care for the stranded hatchlings that wash up on the coast each year and help strengthen them so that they can be released again, but it also cares for large turtles that become stricken with disease, injured by human activity or ingest plastic. Each of these turtles requires unique and specialised care, from X-rays to shell braces, and a dedicated team care for these animals until they are once again released back into their ocean home.
Wildlife Management Programme
Working in partnership with the V&A Waterfront, the Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation has implemented a programme to monitor the welfare of the animals that call the V&A Waterfront and Cape Town harbour home. This Marine Wildlife Management Programme often works hand-in-hand with the City of Cape Town, Department of Environmental Affairs, SANCCOB and the SPCA Wildlife Unit to ensure that any distressed animal that comes into our care receives the best possible care.
To date, the largest role of the Marine Wildlife Management Programme has been the active monitoring and management of the Cape fur seal population in the harbour. A full-time team of seal monitors keeps an eye out for seals that may be injured by entanglement in plastic waste and also help keep seals out of areas that could lead to negative human interactions. The Aquarium maintains a seal platform that allows them to have a resting spot out of danger, where entangled seals can be easily accessed by animal care staff for treatment.
The Marine Wildlife Management Programme also plays a role in the rescue of countless other animals including the rescue of ensnared birds that find themselves trapped on the rooftops of the V&A Waterfront, ushering trapped dolphins and sunfish out of the harbour and back into the ocean, and even helping SANCCOB rescue the occasional penguin that finds its way into port.
