It has been quite some time that I wanted to use our educational materials - especially our 3D coral reef maps - to make available online edutainment for the pleasure of Scuba divers, snorkelers and the entire family. Happy to tell you that this has finally been done!

Bahamas, San Salvador, North Pole Cave South

Bahamas, San Salvador, North Pole Cave South

For the occasion of World Oceans Day on June 8th, we launched the Alpha version of our first Online Coral Reef Treasure Hunt. I am sure there will be plenty of things that can be improved in this new online game  - so please, do improve me!…;-)

The idea is to make people play with knowledge related to coral reefs and in turn reward them with prizes to win. For now, we post a riddle every second day. Each riddle relates to a specific coral reef and the creatures that can be found on that reef. The correct answer to the riddle provides a letter of the alphabet. In total, the first treasure hunt is composed of 13 riddles - so that’s 13 letters. Put together the letters unveil a phrase or a word. And those that get the phrase or word right participate in the final draw for the prize. Pretty simple I think, but i am really wondering if people actually find it that simple. When you know the answers it may appear simple, but you can go quickly wrong with that!…;-)

Hey but why talking about it if i can actually show you how it works! Here is an example of a riddle:

“On the North Pole Cave (S) dive site located on San Salvador in the Bahamas there is an elongated creature capable of changing color at will in order to blend into a new background. What is the name of this peculiar behavior? Take the 3rd letter of the first name of this behavior and insert it into box # 11.”

So… North Pole Cave (S) is the dive site that you see at the top of this blog - and when you access our website and search for North Pole Cave (S) you will find a list of creatures that hang out on that particular dive site (of course there are more species than our list of fifteen, so we chose only the most interesting ones in terms of behaviors that can be observed in the water).

Now, if you have a closer look into that species list you will discover one species that is more elongated than others - the Atlantic trumpetfish! From there you would visit the page for that creature (we will add links to them on the page of the coral reef map to make it even more easy for participants) and read through the text to discover that peculiar behavior of the Atlantic trumpetfish that the riddle is referring to…

Now i don’t want to spill the beans here, but there are just two behaviors in the ‘Attack & Defense Behavior’ section that could possibly have anything to do with ‘blending into a new background’…

And from there you would just count the letters as indicated in the riddle: the third letter of the first name of this behavior is… ? Right, I guess you got it.

What do you think? Easy, tough, too long, not interesting? Send me your comments - I am burning to know….;-)