A new interactive exhibition exploring the problems facing the world’s oceans and some solutions is to open at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute this evening.

Living with the Ocean, a joint project between the BUEI and the exhibition’s sponsor XL Catlin, aims to educate the public about threats to the marine environment including trash, climate change and irresponsible fishing. The exhibition also demonstrates possible solutions through local success stories including Google Earth Liquid Galaxy screens donated by XL Catlin allowing the viewer to “dive” beneath the ocean to see the state of the world’s coral reef systems.

BUEI chairman Jeff Gardner said: “The main message of the exhibition is that oceans are vital to life and the planet. We have not always looked after for our oceans very well but we are learning to and there are some particularly cool Bermuda success stories that we highlight.”

In 2012, XL Catlin launched the Seaview Survey project, a global series of underwater scientific expeditions, including four locations in Bermuda, documenting the health of these reef systems through state-of-the-art cameras. Seaview will return to the same locations in the coming years to monitor how the reefs have changed and whether anything needs to be done to protect them.

Chip Cunliffe, external programmes corporate responsibility at XL Catlin, explained: “We work with scientific partners at the University of Queensland in Australia and local partners around the world including the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences.

“From our point of view it is to understand how healthy reefs are. In two, five or ten years time you can go back and determine how things have changed. You may determine that there has been severe hurricane on a particular reef and that tourists should be kept away from it. It allows you to manage your reefs more sustainably.

“XL Catlin Global Reef Record launched in Bermuda in 2013. The idea behind that is that all the scientific data that we collected is freely available to the scientific community.”

Included in the exhibition is information on the Bermuda Tiger Shark Project launched by Choy Aming and the late Neil Burnie, Frank Watlington’s whale early whale recordings and information on Bermuda’s fish pots that all but decimated local fish populations up until their ban in 1990.

Visitors can view trailers of environmental films — Trashed, End of the Line and Disruption while reading and interacting with numerous printed and digital exhibits.

The exhibition was designed in-house at BUEI by head of design and exhibitions Russell de Moura and project manager Jessica Meredith.

Mr de Moura said: “It was important that there was interactivity that would respond to our grown visitors and our younger visitors so we have a mixture of printed work, visual media, sound bites and some physical ‘interactives’ that people can engage with. It includes a good balance between info-graphics and bite-size content.”

BUEI held a private opening for the exhibition last night attended by the Premier and other dignitaries. It opens to the public this evening from 5pm.