What exactly is a sawfish you may ask? Well a saw fish is exactly what it sounds like! It’s this half-shark, half-ray like fish that has a giant saw-like nose. I can’t say I even knew a sawfish existed until a few weeks ago, but it turns out that this critically endangered species lives off of the coast of Mahajanga. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Marine Biologist Ruth Leeney for the past month and she came to teach my new students about sawfish conservation. It was such an amazing experience to bring this opportunity to my classroom. My students and fellow teachers’ faces lit up learning about this amazing creature and what things they can do to help the sawfish. Not only was it special for them to meet a marine biologist, but it was a trilingual lesson! We used English, French, and Malagasy! In all three languages we talked about the importance of the mangroves in our ecosystem and how they are the protective home of baby sawfish. Deforestation is a huge problem and now students know about a secondary effect of deforestation. They also learned about other factors that have led to their decreased populations such as their predator, the crocodile, and over-fishing. Opportunities like this are far and few between for Malagasy students, so they were very excited to have a special guest and seemed very enthusiastic about doing their part to save sawfish. Hopefully we have inspired these students to be the next generation of advocates for sawfish and our environment!
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