Chesapeake Bay Waters are Showing a Rise in Water Temperatures
Link: https://www.vims.edu/newsandevents/topstories/2022/bay_heat_waves.php
According to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Drs. Piero Mazzini and Cassia Pianca of William & Mary’s Virginia Institute claim through their recent study that marine life in the Chesapeake Bay area is going to suffer high water temperatures due to climate change. Due to factors such as global warming and pollution, the Bay will most likely suffer a great consequence to it’s marine life from this recent display of rising temperatures over the last few decades.
Great Blue Heron catching a fish on a Chesapeake Bay Beach at Sunset (iStock photo)
Marine heat waves falls under the crisis category and has been sent out from the Virginia Institute as a way to tell their audience about the risks of climate change. While the environment as a whole doesn’t have one designated PR team, it does have hundreds of thousands of PR practitioners working together to raise awareness towards issues and even achievements for the environment.
For the institute that put out this article, their intended audience is most likely those who live in the bay area, other educators within the institute, or people who care about climate change in general. Through these audiences, the institute could collect donations or volunteers to help clean up the bay area, or in general find a solution to the heated waters. Holding a beach sweep might help get the bay area community involved to save the environment in which they share with the marine life.
In terms of relevancy, this article goes hand in hand with what COMM 473 covered this week, which was about convincing others see and value the PR practitioner’s intended message. For PR in regards to this article, a good presence of fear or consequence was shown if readers chose not to follow through with reducing pollution in the bay. As a whole, this article was negative due to the fact that pollution as well as climate change is a scary thing to most people. Negativity is somewhat influential to people to enforce action as we talked about in class, so in this case having a negative article about an important issue wasn’t a bad PR move.
In conclusion, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science did a good job at letting the world know about the issue-their brand cohesively falls into one that is concerned about the environment which makes sense for their brand (in this case a institution) as a whole. To move forward, they could do things like hold a fundraiser with a nonprofit organization involved in marine life, or just do more in general to get the community involved with the issue. Many people want to help the environment, but are not always taught how to help. If given the right resources, the community might be able to make a difference that matters for the bay.