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The GB Row 2022 Challenge is now over, thank you for participating! Scroll down to the Virtual Tracker to see where your team placed.
Rowing is for everyone and nurtures vital Life Skills
Learning to row brings unique challenges for a person. Trying to coordinate unusual movements in a small boat with others in synchronisation is not like many other sports. This is why it's know as the ultimate team sport. But rowing also nurtures other vital life skills which Active Row is built on.
LYR’s flagship programme Active Row, introduces rowing to young people who are less likely to participate in physical activity such as those from diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds, girls and individuals with special educational needs or a disability.
The Active Row programme uses rowing as a tool to motivate and inspire young people in a fun, safe and inclusive environment to develop five key life skills: Leadership, teamwork, staying positive, aiming high and problem-solving. Using the Skills Builder Universal Framework, the Active Row programme delivers a unique programme, from weekly interaction with our coaches, termly workshops with people from different industries who help the students envisage the application of life skills in the workplace, and an online resource to emphasis the value they have in society through their life skills.
Diversity, inclusivity, equality,
relationships, empowerment.
Diversify the rowing community, so that it is representative of the population.
Make rowing accessible to young people from all backgrounds, opening the doors to opportunity & better health.
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Crews will be checking and rechecking to make sure they have all the necessary equipment but it takes more than what's in the boat to conquer this row.
The GB Row challenge is a big step up compared to standard flat water rowing. The crews navigate their way through rough seas, tides and shipping lanes around the British Isles covering over 3500km. The crews are in their boats for 25+ days coordinating and taking shifts rowing. All along also undertaking a survey for environmental research.
As massive as the challenge seems, the success of the crews comes down to the people in them. Each crew member is as human as the next with their own lives and life obstacles. But through their experiences, each has developed unique skills which will bring value to their crews. To be able to work as a crew each person will have to draw on common fundamental life skills to be able to work towards the same goal. These life skills are often taken for granted but the better people are at them, the better they can apply their unique capabilities towards a common goal.
Click a skill to learn how LYR's life skills will be crucial for the GB Row challenge.
This skill is relevant not only for individuals in positions of management with formal power, but also for individuals working with peers in teams.
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about application of leadership skills
This skill applies to working within both formal and informal teams, and also with customers, clients or other stakeholders. Initially, this is about individuals fulfilling expectations around being positive, behaving appropriately, being timely and reliable and taking responsibility. This extends to understanding and respecting diversity of others' cultures, beliefs and backgrounds.
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This skill is about being able to plan effectively - both to achieve organisational goals, and also to set their own personal development targets. Initially, this is about knowing when something is too difficult, and having a sense of what doing well looks like for an individual.
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This skill focuses on how to solve problems, recognising that while part of Problem Solving is technical know-how and experience, there are also transferable tools that individuals can develop and use.
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There are more challenges to the world's toughest rowing race than circumnavigating Great Britain in a rowing boat.
On top of the physical and mental challenge, crews are also tasked with collecting a series of water samples along with monitoring ocean noise. This survey is a part of a four-year study in partnership with the University of Portsmouth to develop an ecological map of Great Britain’s waters.
The survey looks to measure: Microplastics, eDNA, ocean noise pollution, water salinity and temperature. The study will provide an analysis of ocean pollution's impact on the health of marine fish and mammals.
The Univeristy of Portsmouth hosts world leading research across major issues facing the planet and society. The scientists at the University of Portsmouth need data collection like this to be able to develop effective solutions and influence policy toward building a more sustainable future and protecting our environment for the next generation.
There’s a huge body of evidence showing the harmful impact of microplastics on aquatic life. Where plastics enter the ocean isn’t where they stay, however, and researchers are keen to understand how they move.
While microplastics sampling has been done before, it has never been as a continuous flow of data from around the UK. And that’s exactly what we’ll achieve.
Samples of water will be taken every day of the row, for a couple hours each day and then sent to the University of Portsmouth for processing. The end result will be a heatmap of microplastic pollution in the waters surrounding the British Isles.
The research will be examining microplastics above 50 micron in size — the very smallest size you can see with a human eye. The plastic fragments will be identified with a specialist microscope in the University labs, which can even detect the type of plastic found.
Other water samples will allow scientists to measure eDNA in fish and marine mammals. It will create a picture of what species are living in and around different areas of the coast and how these might be changing over time.
Cells that have shed from animals (eDNA) are picked up on the purpose-made water filter. University researchers will process the DNA to give an indication of species in the area, such as a whale or dolphin. This may prove helpful to verify other findings — for example, if the soundscape has picked up ‘clicks’ from dolphins, the eDNA may verify this and potentially identify the species.
As the team row past major river estuaries we anticipate a greater density of microplastics and chemical pollutants. We may also see a correlation with the distribution of species in relation to the pollutants present. It should paint a vivid picture of what's going on —- this is why the long-term data set is really important and useful.
Noise pollution is one of the major pollution problems in our ocean. As human activity expands, underwater soundscapes are changing. Habitats are increasingly dominated by human-made noise, which can have a range of impacts on marine wildlife – from behavioural disturbance to physiological damage.
Constant noise samples will be taken via an underwater microphone fitted to the boats, called a hydrophone. Hydrophones are commonly used to map sound in marine environments, but are normally static (monitoring what travels past) – our research will provide a continuous map of sound around the UK. We should pick up passing ships, drilling at oil rigs and wind farms and potentially noises from marine mammals. The research may pick up short-term variations too, such as increased noise on sunny days due to leisure boating.
The University will analyse the distribution of noise using technology typically used for space science! Dr Andrew Lundgren and the team at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation will use computer algorithms to identify changes in the soundscape.
Sensitive temperature and salinity monitors onboard the GB Row boats will provide very accurate data, which may reveal changes year on year. Oceanographers can make good use of this data as it will be very accurate and it may prove useful to other scientists looking at climate-related impacts on wildlife distribution.
