Dear <<First Name>>

It was a whole World Week of Ocean! So good, so diverse! The greatest inspiration of the day was that one of the winners of this year’s top Sea Lion Prize, donated the prize money, 200€, to the Centre Sikati de Mingo'o, a school set up by the local civil society group WOPA, 75 km away from coastal Kribi, Cameroon. The centre offers basic literacy and numeracy education to pygmy children, who do not have access to public schools. They had heard about Mundus maris Awards contest, but could not participate for dramatic lack of means. The centre gratefully received the donationW. An example to follow in the best tradition of international solidarity.

Get a glimpse of the great paintings, poems, stories and video contributions selected by the international jury out of more than 60 submissions from 10 countries.

Throughout the week, Mundus maris organised online and on-site events and contributed to those of our partners. See some of the highlights below. Some reports are still pending.

We also seized the opportunity to make a significant donation to Casa dei Pesci in Tuscany, Italy. Led by Ippolito Turco the non-profit organisation around Paolo Fanciulli, or Paolo il Pescatore as he is known, has launched a fresh drive to protect the coastal waters from damaging bottom trawling. How? They already sunk a dozen beautiful sculptures in collaboration with such renowned sculptors as Emily Young into the sea. The underwater museum created this way makes trawling more difficult. Around the underwater sculptures, fish biomass and the size of individual fish are already increasing. The challenge now is to turn 30 additional blocks of Carrara marble donated to the cause by the Cave di Michelangelo into sculptures and raise the money needed to transport the 10 to 12 ton blocks to their destination, thus enlarging the protected area. It’s urgent, because artisanal fishers like Paolo il Pescatore using passive gear can not compete with the trawlers. A book describing the epic David and Goliath type battle and a summer festival help raise the necessary funding. Please support Casa dei Pesci with a donation to make a dream come true and match the Maremma land protection in the sea. With your help, it can be done, it will be done!

Let me conclude with another piece of hopeful news from the campaign on the long-promised phasing out of harmful fisheries subsidies in the World Trade Organization (WTO). You might remember the fish melt-down stunt organised on March 1st, when Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a steadfast finance expert and former finance minister in Nigeria, took the helm of WTO.

Countries are now closer than ever to a conclusion at the Ministerial Meeting on 15 July 2021. Within the alliance of civil society organisations which Mundus maris contributed to IISD has produced a video explaining what is at stake.

And if you are already in holiday mood and read Italian or Spanish, relax by reading about an early European, Decimus Magnus Ausonius (about 310–396) who takes you on a journey to the culinary delights of different fish in the Moselle River and more. Discover how knowledge, cultures and technologies travelled with the people and check out some more (on the fish) thanks to the free FishBase platform that adds the science at the tip of your fingers. Our next newsletter will cover July and August 2021, our participation in several conferences where we report on the SSF Academy and more. Stay with us and support our work with your feedback and donations. Thanks to those who have recently started monthly donations which are particularly helpful for keeping a high level of activities.

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Activities around the world