2023 Science Without Borders® Challenge Finalists: 15-19 year old students
The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation is delighted to announce the finalists in our 2023 Science Without Borders® Challenge! This international contest engages students in important ocean issues through art. This year we asked students to create a piece of art that highlights the beauty and importance of a marine species that is on the brink of extinction.
This year we received more entries than ever before. Over 1,200 entries flooded in from 67 different countries, and let us tell you, it was no easy feat to choose the finalists. We hope you will be as impressed with the submissions we received as we were.
Entries to the Science Without Borders® Challenge are judged in two categories based on age. Here are the finalists selected from the older group of applicants, students 15-19 years old:
"We Are Next" by Boram Shim, Age 16, United States of America
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: Humans would be the ones getting extinct at the end of the sixth extinction. I portrayed the extinct animals, an endangered dolphin, and a person lining up in a film tape as a warning that it will eventually be our turn to be extinct, like a scene in a filmstrip that would inevitably be played in chronological order. Unlike the five previous mass extinctions that occurred due to environmental pressures, “the sixth extinction” is driven by human activities like oil spills, ocean trash, and net entanglements. Vaquita is on the verge of extinction—only ten left—due to illegal fishing and entanglement in gillnets. Moreover, less than 10,000 Kemp’s Ridley Turtles are left due to pollution, overfishing, and humans’ use of artificial light. Furthermore, only 1570 Hawaiian Monk Seals are left due to net entanglements. Finally, tombstones symbolize the deaths of humans following the destruction of marine ecosystems.
