Marine education for coastal and city youth

Kepulauan Seribu Regency, which is part of DKI Jakarta Province, has coastal ecosystem whose sustainability needs to be maintained. Marine education, in the form of coastal ecosystem maintenance, is needed by the younger generation in this regency. The purpose of this study is to determine in which age group is most appropriate for intensive education, both for the young generation who come from the city of Jakarta, the biggest city area in Indonesia, and the coastal youth generation of Kepulauan Seribu Coast which are fishermen's children. Peers group consisting of students from Elementary School, Junior High School, and Senior High School, originated from both the City of Jakarta and The Kepulauan Seribu, trained to love the ocean and monitor the preservation of coastal ecosystems. The training was conducted in Kepulauan Seribu area, particularly in Pramuka Island. The activities of the training include coral reef observation techniques using Coral Health Chart method, seagrass condition observation by Seagrass Watch method, mangrove ecosystem density measurement, and awareness of marine biota existence. The result shows that the group of Junior High Schools is the best suited as the participant of the training. In this group, both Jakarta and Kepulauan Seribu students experienced the highest knowledge increase (80%). For elementary school participants, the improvement of knowledge for students coming from Jakarta is higher. Meanwhile, the increase of knowledge of senior high school students is no more than 60% and the students from the Kepulauan Seribu have a higher knowledge increase.