ED&EM: Sailing Away with the Maritime Mahi Expo
We want to thank all of those who attended the very first Maritime Mahi Expo. It was a stunner of a day that saw students and youth alike exploring various pathways into many maritime and marine careers.
Our heartfelt thanks goes out to the NZ Maritime Museum and Leichelle Tanoa for hosting the event and allowing us to take over their plaza space and education room. They were incredible hosts and were very accommodating. Our thanks also goes out to all 11 exhibitors who engaged with everyone. In no particular order, they included MAST Academy, NZ Maritime School, Te Toki Voyaging Trust, Spirit of NZ, Fullers 360, Port of Auckland, BLAKE NZ, Maritime Police, NZ Diving, Biosecurity from Auckland Council, Goat Island Marine Discovery Centre, and Manaaki Marine, They were all fantastic.
The day was packed full of activities for the students. It involved a careers type expo where the students could freely walk around and engage with the various exhibitors as well as the museum itself, and then also 3 different presentations by MAST Academy, NZ Maritime School and Te Toki Voyaging Trust.
Among the exhibitions there was BLAKE NZ with their NZ-VR experience, Fullers 360 with their mooring toss challenge, a chance to walk on board the Maritime Police’s Deodar boat and explore the deck and cabins, and creatures and sniffer dogs from Biosecurity. It was great to see so many interactions in the expo, and hear questions being asked after the presentations.
The success of this expo shows that more focused career events can be positive. We’ve had a couple ideas of what we can do next across a couple different sectors, so keep an eye out for what we have planned. For now, enjoy these pictures from the Maritime Mahi Expo.
