President Major-General (Ret’d) Jioji Konusi Konrote yesterday officiated at the opening of the World Oceans Day Symposium at the Grand Pacific Hotel in Suva.

The day-long symposium, organised by the Pacific Community, is to celebrate World Oceans Day and to remind everyone about the major role the oceans have in everyday life.

The action focus for this year’s celebration is: preventing plastic pollution and encouraging solutions for a healthy ocean.

President Konrote called on all Fijians to play their part in protecting and learning more about our ocean for its health and sustainability.

President Konrote also officially launched the Pacific Ocean Portal, which was developed by oceanographers, ICT and communications specialists from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, in consultation with a wide range of Pacific Island users.

The portal brings together high-quality, open-access ocean data from a variety of sources and displays information visually on dashboards, maps and graphs that can be easily cut, pasted, and shared.

Other non-government organisations were also part of the event that set up booths to inform people about ocean sustainability.