Deep Indonesia 2009 Bring Awareness to Conserve Coral Reefs

Karawaci 14/04/09 ? ?350 years is needed for coral reefs to form. Therefore we need to preserve it with care,? said the head of Visual Communication Design Department of UPH, Yongky Safanayong. He asserted this while discussing about Deep Indonesia 2009 poster design competition which purpose is to invite Indonesia?s society to love the sea and its resources.

A lot of Visual Communication Design students from UPH, year 2006 and 2007, participated in the competition which focused on the harmony between human and coral reefs. Two of them, Yuvens Winatra and Nikko Purnama Lukman had succeeded to become the third winner and the second aspiring winner for their poster designs.

Safanayong asserted the importance of this kind of competition, which is to increase public awareness about the urgency to conserve coral reefs for the sake of our ecosystem balance. He was concerned with the fact that coral reefs are now on the edge of extinction, especially in Indonesia, which in fact is the place for about 1/8 of the world?s coral reefs. ?Indonesia posses the most beautiful coral reefs in the whole world. Now the existence of Indonesia?s coral reefs had decreased into just six percent,? he said. It was calculated that the capacious of Indonesia?s coral reefs is more than 60.000 kilometer square, ranging from the western area to the eastern area of Indonesia.

Therefore, he said, the public and also fishermen must fully aware of this and start to appreciate and conserve coral reefs. ?As human beings who are grateful to God, we should care,? he said. He stated that basically coral reefs play a very big role in balancing our ecosystem. If they extinct then the ecosystem would be unstable.

Meanwhile, this competition had given positive impacts for each one of the participants from UPH. The third winner of this competition, Yuvens Winatra, said that his purpose in designing the poster was to show the public, as well as fishermen, that if coral reefs finally extinct then the sea would be harmed. The second aspiring winner, Nikko Purnama Lukman, also stated that he is now become more concerned about the extinction of Indonesia?s coral reefs. ?We could shout out about this matter more effectively if we, students, work together campaigning for the sake of coral reefs,? he said.

One of the best 20 finalist of this competition, Salsa Soetjoadi, who is also another Visual Communication Design student from UPH, agreed with Nikko by saying that she herself had been triggered to put more efforts in bringing awareness to the public and fishermen to conserve Indonesia?s coral reefs. ?Our concern about coral reefs? existence needs to be improved. Maybe there should be directive counseling for our fishermen,? she suggested.

At the present, the world is not only faced with the efforts to conserve coral reefs. Now there are so much more ecosystem balance ?foundations? such as forests, water, and air that need to be conserved. Concerning the matter, Safanayong suggested that there should be some kind of ecology campaign in our educational world aimed for the students so that they become aware to conserve our nature.

UPH Media Relations