Sherkin Island Marine Station holds 22nd environmental awareness Munster School Competition

Sherkin Island Marine Station has announced the results for its 22nd annual environmental awareness competition for Munster primary schools. The competition is sponsored by Inland Fisheries Ireland, who are one of eight sponsors and aims to promote awareness of environmental issues among national school children within the Munster region. The top overall winners included schools from Limerick, Tralee, Mallow, Dunmanway and Tramore.

As part of the competition, participants submitted a picture or project as an individual or group entry and were encouraged to use their imagination to expand on either of the two themes ‘My Favourite Place/Animal’ or ‘Protecting our Environment’. Some of the results from each of the competition categories were as follows:

Category	Winner	School
Class/School	Room 1 & Room 2 “To Bee or Not to Bee”	Catherine Mc Auley, Special School, Ashbourne Avenue, Co. Limerick
Junior and Senior Infants	Emily Horgan “My favourite Animal”	Knockaclarig NS, Knockaclarig, Brosna, Tralee, Co. Kerry
1st and 2nd Class	Eamon Mc Groary “My Favourite Animal”	St Brendan’s NS Rathcoole, Mallow, Co. Cork
3rd and 4th Class	Dannie Wilson “My Favourite Place”	Model School, Dunmanway, Co. Cork
5th and 6th Class	Emma Doyle “Protecting Our Environment”	Fenor NS, Fenor, Tramore, Co. Waterford

Matt Murphy, founder of Sherkin Island Marine Station said: “One of the main aims of Sherkin Island Marine Station is to help introduce young people to nature and the environment through our educational programmes. We find the uptake of the competition to be fantastic throughout Munster and we enjoy seeing the children’s originality and creativity surrounding environmental issues. I would like to thank all of our sponsors without whom we would not be able to offer over 400 prizes to school children around Munster.”

Speaking about the competition Dr Ciaran Byrne, CEO of Inland Fisheries Ireland said: “We are delighted to be one of the sponsors for this competition and I would like to commend Sherkin Island Marine Station for the work they are doing in educating young people across Munster around environmental issues. Inland Fisheries Ireland places a large focus on conservation and we ourselves have been carrying out many changes across our national organisation to help reduce our carbon footprint.

We know that every person and organisation can do their part and by educating our young people, we can make a difference to future generations and their attitude towards the natural world.”

The full list of results can be found on https://www.sherkinmarine.ie/competitionresults.htm. Over 400 books on the themes of Irish nature and wildlife will be awarded to the winners in each category. The Sherkin Island Marine Station School Competition was sponsored by City Print, Cork City County Council, Geological Survey of Ireland, Inland Fisheries Ireland, Jannsen Pharmecuticals, Natures Web, and Sherkin Comment.

Artwork: Alexa Cooke Fenor NS, Fenor, Tramore, Co Waterford