WCS-India showcased the website on India’s marine life, BlueMAP-India, at the Student Conference on Conservation Science (SCCS), Bangalore, organized from October 9th to 12th, 2023.
The visuals are a major highlight of the website and were a crowd favorite. We showcased the interactive habitat poster front and center using a large screen and provided two additional touch-screen devices for people to interact with the website and the user interface. We also printed postcards derived from illustrations hosted on the website as material to distribute further.
The concept and the website were received very well by a diverse range of individuals including young researchers, senior experts, college and school students, as well as people without any wildlife or science training.
This test-launch at SCCS-Bangalore proved to be a valuable exercise in terms of assessing the reception of a resource like this, while also bringing in important feedback and actionable points for the resource’s improvement. Interactions also helped us get a social media following that is now building up organically for a final launch event.
The youngest group we interacted with was a group of high school students and they expressed a lot of interest in the website as a resource to help them learn more about marine habitats. There was collective feedback on BlueMAP-India potentially being the first of its kind resource in India that combines and connects several diverse themes of information about India’s marine life, habitats, and laws.
