This year Blue World Institute is celebrating World Water Day, 22nd of March and Earth Day 22nd of April by hosting travelling exhibition “Diversity matters” by Natural History Museum of Rijeka. This exhibition was produced as a part of European project “Museumcultour” (The Adriatic’s museums enrich curtural tourism) funded under the IPA Adriatic Cross-Border Cooperation 2007- 2013 Programme.

Visitors at the exhibition

Sponsored by Town of Mali Lošinj Tourism Office and Primorsko-goranska County, the exhibition is placed at the main walk, Riva lošinjskih kapetana, in the City of Mali Lošinj from 22nd of March until 1st of May. Opening of the exhibition was the opportunity for Blue World Education Team to celebrate World Water Day by organizing workshop about biodiversity for the local elementary school children.

Workshops with children

Through this exhibition of Natural History Museum Rijeka is trying to answer the questions “Why is the biodiversity so important?”, “What has life on Earth been through to this day?”, “Who and what are its main enemies?” and “What can we I do?”. The exhibition will try to prove our statements with some evidences considering biodiversity condition of the Adriatic Sea and also educate visitors of importance of their involvence in this topic according to globaly known enviromentalits slogan “Think globaly, act localy”. Biodiversity is the term nowadays used very often. Everyone have heard of it, many probably know what it means but too few truly understand its importance. Often we forget that iti is the result of almost 4 billion years of life’s evolution. Today we are witnessing the existence, according to some scientific estimates, of several million living species of animals, plants, fungi and bacteria. All of these are directly or indirectly connected with relationship network that ensures harmonious functioning of ecosystems and ultimately life on Earth in general. With the loss of some species and habitats we are unavoidably losing the diversity and hence the stability of the system and the quality of life as we know it. “Diversity matters” is a travelling exhibition that will take you through a turbulent past of the Earth, show you the planet’s dynamic and complex present and guide you to the future where the choice of the final destination is completely up to you! Two of our curator trainees will guide you through this exhibition – Sharky and Dinko. Why exactly them and the answers and explanations on previously mentioned issues and facts you can find on the exhibition panels following the sequence of letters (because) bioDIVERSITY MATTERS!

Children giving their impressions on the exhibition

In 2015 exhibition „Diversity matters“ won the „Biodiversity is Us Implementation Award” by WAZA (World Association of Zoos and Aquariums). Additionally, same year the exhibition got the annual award of Croatian Museum Association for education programmes.