Martin Keeley carrying out hands-on activities with Year 5 students from Prospect Primary School earlier this year.

Martin Keeley, Cayman Islands teacher and Education Director of the Mangrove Action Project (MAP), has been selected to receive the National Marine Educators Association’s Outstanding Teacher Award for 2008.

The award honours effective and innovative marine science education in the classroom. Mr Keeley was recognised for his history of outstanding performance as a marine science educator in the Pacific Northwest and the Cayman Islands.

Mr Keeley will be honoured on 23 July at a ceremony during the National Marine Educators Association’s (NMEA) annual conference in Savannah, Georgia, hosted by the Georgia Association of Marine Education. NMEA is a national professional organization founded in 1976 for all educators of marine and aquatic science.

With more than 3,000 members, NMEA is represented primarily in North America, but has chapters in other parts of the world including the Caribbean, Australia and Hawaii.

Mr Keeley, who is Brac Campus Director for the University College of the Cayman Islands, has been teaching in Cayman since 1998. He researched, developed and produced the Marvellous Mangroves in the Cayman Islands teachers’ guide in conjunction with the National Trust, the Department of Educational Services and MAP.

He has been responsible for its implementation in schools throughout Cayman and has also supervised the adaptation, translation and implementation of Marvelous Mangroves for the education systems in other countries including Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Brazil.

“I am honoured to have been given this prestigious award,” he said. “It recognises there is a continual need for students to learn, through hands-on exploration, the true importance of the natural world around them.”

Mr Keeley added: “Mangroves are essential not only for the survival of marine, avian and terrestrial species which depend on them, but for our own survival. Those of us who live on tropical coastlines where mangroves form the buffer between us and ocean-driven storms need their protection against hurricanes.

“This is especially true with the advent of climate change and its accompanying sea-level rise, and the horrendous damage caused by massive storms like the Cyclone Nargis, which recently hit Myanmar, and the 2004 Asian Tsunami.”