We were happy to celebrate the 29th Dolphin Day! This is the 10th year since the celebration of this traditional event was moved to July 1st.

In the park behind the church of St. Antun Opat in Veli Lošinj, we organised a presentation of current Blue World Institute projects. The gathered had the opportunity to hear news from the Adriatic Dolphin Project, long-term scientific research of bottlenose dolphins in the Adriatic Sea. Furthermore, we presented the “Improvement and Increase of Sea Turtle Rescue Centre Capacity” project funded from the Operational Programme Competitiveness and Cohesion of the European Structural and Investment Funds (KK.06.5.2.04.0004), as well as the LIFE EUROTURTLES (Collective actions for improving the conservation status of EU sea turtle populations) and LIFE DELFI (Dolphin Experience: Lowering Fishing Interactions) projects carried out with the assistance of LIFE financial instrument of the EU and the SOUNDSCAPE Interreg Italy-Croatia project co-financed from the European Regional Development Fund. If you didn’t have the opportunity to join us, find out more about our projects on our website.

At the same time, art workshops for children took place, including street chalk painting and painting of marine motives on the driftwood. School children, gathered in eight groups, participated in the traditional “Treasure hunt” game with the same enthusiasm as every year. At the moment when the ban on the sale of disposable plastics comes into force, special attention was drawn to the cotton bags painting, the use of which encourages the reduction of the single-use plastic and responsible behavior towards the environment. We thank the Kanpak company for a donation of the cotton bags for this event.

To actively involve adults in Dolphin Day, a very popular and visited pub quiz was designed for the end. Thus, in the evening, Lošinj Marine Education Centre became the scene of a knowledge competition on marine themes.

At last, we thank the Society of Marine Researchers – 20,000 miles, which enriched this year’s Dolphin Day program with a guest exhibition of underwater photographs “Light and Dark on the Sea Path”.