Educational activities help specialized audiences, like school children, to appreciate the exhibitions better.
Special events, games or documents are designed by the educational service, together with outside organizations. They provide this little extra necessary to take full advantage of the Aquarium and the other rooms. However, one should never forget what a dream it is to discover the Oceanographic Museum!
Outside the institution, educational activities are set up in different forms: conferences, exhibitions, to make people aware of the underwater world.
The Museum has always welcomed important scientists. Since its creation in 1960, the Centre Scientifique de Monaco has had its laboratories here.
At present, the Museum houses the Observatoire Océanologique Européen (OOE) created in 1990 within the Centre Scientifique de Monaco. The purpose of its research is to prevent ecological disasters and to restore marine ecosystems.
For the first time, the culture of reef-building corals was mastered on a large scale inside closed-circuit aquaria. The laboratory coral (mini and micro-corals) serve as biological models to study the mechanisms of calcification and the photosynthesis of their symbiotic algae called zooxanthilae.
The operation of coral ecosystems is studied from models of live reefs kept in aquaria. There researches are very important, because coral reefs, the marine equivalent of forests, play a role in maintaining the balance of the planet.
Laboratory work is complemented by experiments done on location during missions carried out in the Red Sea or in the Pacific and Indian oceans.
But the OOE is also interested in the ecology and ecophysiology of some organisms, like the red coral or the caulerpa, which are important for the balance of the Mediterranean coastal environments.
"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page", St. Augustine said. Here at www.travel-university.org we believe that every page must be read and explored. Travel is an avenue of learning that no text or classroom can teach. The world is a living classroom and you the student. We invite you to the www.travel-university.org library where you can read general interest and detail oriented articles.
