Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 27, 2025

Measuring the Structure, Composition, and Change of Underwater Environments with Large-area Imaging
Published on: April 18, 2025
"Draw the sea…": Children's representations of ocean connectivity in Fiji and New Caledonia
Elodie Fache1, Susanna Piovano2, Alisi Soderberg2
1SENS, IRD, CIRAD, Univ Paul Valery Montpellier 3, Univ Montpellier, Montpellier, France. elodie.fache@ird.fr.
Abstract:
In the South Pacific region, marine territories and resources play a crucial role for local communities. Children engage with these territories and resources from an early age onwards. As the next ocean stewards, they are a stakeholder group whose understandings of ocean connectivity and fisheries should be given serious consideration in decision-making processes towards the sustainable use and management of coastal seas. This paper analyses 290 children's drawings from Fiji and New Caledonia, created in 2019 in spontaneous response to the instruction: "Draw the sea and what you and others do in the sea". Exploring the webs of connections with and within the sea revealed by these children's drawings and their own interpretations leads us to discuss children's representations of the sea: (1) beyond a land-sea compartmentation, (2) as a locus of both exploitation and conservation of marine life, and (3) as a 'place-full' space connecting human and more-than-human realms.
Related Concept Videos
States of Water
Water freezes when the intermolecular forces are greater than the kinetic energy. Unlike most other substances, water is less dense in its solid state than in its liquid state. This is because each water molecule can form...
The Water Cycle
Tidal Forces
Osmoregulation in Fishes
Buoyancy
Fischer Projections

