Virtual Dive Experience Come explore the Berwickshire Marine Reserve from the comfort of your own home! Take on the perspective of a diver and venture out and explore this virtual realm to learn more about the animals inhabited in the reserve! Importance of Enviornmental Conservation It is wildly accepted that anthropogenic climate change fundamentally alters ocean ecosystems, heavily impacting marine wildlife. Certain marine wildlife face potential extinction due to the consequences of an influx of Carbon Dioxide and other Green House Gases (GHG). They are affected due to the changes in water temperature, ocean acidification, and deoxygenation. Coastal and Marine Animals play a crucial role in maintaining the aquatic ecosystem’s health and balance. Climate change also impacts the ocean and coast’s ability to provide a carbon sink (Stores C02, thereby reducing the level of GHG in the atmosphere), oxygen generation, and food availability. An increase in the water temperature also contributes to the rising sea levels. As glaciers and ice in the poles begin to melt, waters begin to rise. This also causes coastal countries to begin retracting and slowly be engulfed by the ocean water over time. The Berwickshire heritage site has partners in Nature Scot and the Blue Marine Foundation. Nature Scot is Scotland’s national agency for improving the national environment in Scotland. The Blue Marine Foundation is a charity that tackles overfishing to restore the health of the oceans. Overfishing damages the biodiversity of the ocean environment thereby also affecting the ability to store carbon. Improving the health of the ocean will allow the ocean to function as a carbon sink much better. Carbon sinks are crucial for reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, lowering the level of greenhouse gas. What are countries doing about climate change? The Paris Agreement is a voluntary agreement put forth by the UNFCCC to incentivize countries to lower their carbon and greenhouse gas emissions. Each country has set their own goals to help reduce its carbon emissions and slow global warming down. More information can be read about the Paris Agreement on the official website here. How are animal sightings recorded? Animal Sightings are recorded in the form of usually paper forms. The Seawatch Foundation, a British national marine environmental charity record the data on the number of Dolphins, Whales, and Porpoises via sighting forms. Take a look here if you’re curious! Those forms are collected and stored in a large database to keep track of the status and distributions of those animals in the UK. Setting Up Installing the Game To install the game, download the zip file from here. (Note. The application currently only works for Windows OS) Downloading the game may take a while as the total file size is 5.33GB. Once the game is installed and unzipped, open the WindowsNoEditor folder and double click on VirtualDive.exe Features Take a screenshot from some of your favourite moments in the virtual dive experience and share them on social media! Navigate around the coastal environment as diver and try to find as many animals as possible! Upon looking at the animals from up close, the corresponding animal data will be available to view from your in game journal! In-Game Instructions Note: For the key controls, when booting up the game, you may need to press the same button twice to activate them. This should only be done once at the start of the simulation. To open the instructions page, press L. To open the journal, press P. Navigate through the journal by pressing the left and right arrows on your keyboard. Control the character’s movements with w,a,s,d and their direction with the mouse. To take a screenshot, press M. The game will freeze momentarily when the screenshot action is called. Screenshots are then stored in the following folder: Open the virtual dive folder after opening the WindowsNoEditor folder, click on the saved folder, screenshots folder, and then the WindowsNoEditor folder. Your screenshots will be saved there. Share those screenshots on social media! List of Marine Wildlife Grey Seals Thornback Ray Minke Whale Bottlenose DolphinArctic WolffishHermit Crab Lobster Moon Jellyfish In Game Screenshots In-game footage of the simulation Sources https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/ocean-and-climate-change https://www.seawatchfoundation.org.uk/our-mission/ https://www.bluemarinefoundation.com/ https://www.nature.scot/about-naturescot https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement