Comic book as an educational strategy to communicate fish bombing to schoolchildren

Abstract

Fish bombing impacts the marine ecosystem and local communities adversely, but is still being practiced in Sabah, Malaysia. To encourage more sustainable fishing practices, a creative educational strategy using a comic book was developed and evaluated in a marine protected area in Sabah. Questionnaire surveys and focus group discussions with 120 schoolchildren revealed that the comic book facilitated the improvement and retention of knowledge over time, knowledge sharing with family members, and growing intention to communicate the downsides of fish bombing to their community. This demonstrates the capability of comic books to convey sensitive environmental messages to coastal communities.

Acknowledgments

We thank Banggi Coral Conservation Society, Sabah Parks and WWF-Malaysia for providing their feedback to improve the design of the comic book. We would also like to express our gratitude to teachers, especially Mr. Vijaya Ragavan A/L Subramany, and students of SMK Abdul Rahim, Kudat, Malaysia for coordinating and participating in this study, making this a success despite the challenges faced during the Covid-19 pandemic. We sincerely thank Wan Nur Syazana Wan Mohamad Ariffin, Kamila Yusof, Eva Vivian Justine, Sofia Johari and Ashraf Rahman for providing support and assistance to this study.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by funding in part from the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) via the United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) under grant agreement NE/P021107/1 to the Blue Communities project, which was hosted by Universiti Malaya under reference IF052A-2017. The creation of the comic book was partly supported by funding from The Rufford Foundation in the form of Rufford Small Grant awarded to VCL (reference no. 28095-1) which was hosted by the Universiti Malaya under reference no. IF050-2019.