2021 Rockfish Art Festival Auction

ROCKFISH NOW ON DISPLAY AT GIBSONS PUBLIC MARKET! COME VIEW THEM - they are so much more vibrant in person!

The 3rd Annual Rockfish Art Festival is a community art festival and fundraiser for the Nicholas Sonntag Marine Education Centre.

Throughout the month of May, families, individuals, artists, businesses, classrooms, and community groups have been decorating plywood rockfish canvases (approx 29" w X 15" h) as part of the Rockfish Art Festival & Auction. The beautifully decorated rockfish have been returned to the Market and are on display throughout the building.

Bid on a fish, 'catch' one in the auction, and support your local marine education centre!

The event launches on World Oceans Day - June 8th - an opportunity for us all to learn more about how we can work towards preserving our local marine environment.

Thank you to Gibsons Building Supplies for providing the plywood, Bodhi Biggs for cutting the canvases, and to all our volunteers for helping organize this great community event.

Opening Summer 2017, the NSMEC became a community aquarium operating under a collect-hold-release model. This model allows the centre to collect exclusively local marine animals, which, after a short stay at the Centre, will be released back to the local marine environment. This forward-thinking model of aquarium is unique to only three other aquarium societies in Canada, making these community aquariums pioneers in this field. Having only local species as residents inside the aquarium strengthen the connection with our local coastal waters. “Release days” will be memorable events organized with the entire Sunshine Coast community to further that connection even more.

Our focus is to ensure that the Centre will positively impact all those who enter, that our educational programs will inspire and encourage positive behavioral change for all ages, and that our projects will support sustainability of our local ecosystems for the benefit of current and future generations.