Protect wildlife

Whether you’ve just started out or are a seasoned environmentalist, there’s always something new to learn about protecting the ocean’s extraordinary creatures.

As part of a Caribbean-wide Reef Rescue Network, marine scientists are bringing together educational organizations, volunteers, ecotourists, businesses, and dive shops to restore and reinforce coral populations using state-of-the-art strategies.

Village communities are saving forests and wetlands that are one of the largest natural carbon stores in the world, as well as protecting and rehabilitating critically endangered orangutans.

Reef education specialists are planting 20,000 corals grown in rope-and-rack nurseries to restore ocean habitats and build on locally led marine innovation.

Island innovators are restoring 40,000 “super corals” to the reef to save wildlife habitat and spread global awareness.

Farming under the sea? Meet Bren Smith, the ocean farming pioneer whose vertical kelp and shellfish farms can transform the way food is produced. As a commercial fisherman, Bren’s career was nearly wrecked by the crashing cod stocks in the North Atlantic; he then turned to oyster farming, just in time for catastrophic, climate-driven storms to show him there wasn’t a solid future in that, either. Unwilling to tether himself to land, he took the hard lessons learned and returned to the sea with a new method of restorative ocean farming. What he discovered is a way to produce large quantities of nutritious food that fights the climate crisis, cleans the ocean, creates aquatic habitat, and sustains his sea-going way of life.

Blue Carbon is about mud and the multiple benefits that estuaries provide for us. As wetlands ecologist John Rybczyk says, “You never go into a wetland and just restore one benefit.” It improves water quality, provides salmon habitat, protects our shorelines, and also benefits our climate. In 2018, Restore America’s Estuaries led a first-of-its-kind study in the Snohomish Estuary of Puget Sound, Washington to quantify the climate benefits of estuary restoration. This short film helps to build awareness of blue carbon (carbon that’s captured and stored by coastal wetlands) as a climate mitigation tool and to encourage more investment in wetland restoration at local, state, and federal levels.

Since starting to regularly venture out into the pelagic zone 10 years ago, Jorge Cervera Hauser has filmed and photographed some of the most fascinating marine species on the planet. He spoke to us about finding new ways of doing conservation and working alongside fishing communities in Mexico to develop open ocean ecotourism.

For 20 days, a team of expeditioners set out to tag sharks along the Cocos-Galápagos Swimway, all in the effort of protecting marine species from human pressures. For one grant-winning participant, it was a novel experience and a renewal of hope.

As a scientist, activist, and environmental policy plaintiff, Randall Arauz has seen how doing diligent research in the field is a pathway to enacting change in the courtroom. With his attention now focused on the Eastern Tropical Pacific Seascape, he’s looking to once again use data-driven science to preserve this jeopardized ecosystem and the small-scale fishers who depend on it.

Many of us are deeply disconnected from the ocean, the origin of our very existence. Stuck as we are to land, it’s become easy to see the ocean as an endless dumpster for our wastes, a source to feed all our wild consumption. But collective movements give us hope, and creating and expanding strong marine protected areas can bring back the richness and abundance of ocean life.

Krill, a small shrimp-like crustacean, underpins the food web of the entire Antarctic marine ecosystem. Yet climate change and the concentration of krill fishing in just a few areas are a threat to their existence, and therefore to the existence of all species in Antarctica.

In 2015, West Papua declared the world’s first conservation province. There’s so much we can celebrate about and learn from this visionary legislation rooted in ancient wisdom.

The cold fjords surrounding Lofoten in Norway display an orca ballet, and a remarkable feeding behavior that few have ever seen. In 2019, the courage of young people protected this area of natural beauty from oil drilling.

When we think of sharks as mindless killers, we forget their vital place in the ocean ecosystem. But targeted for their prized fins and meat, mako sharks desperately need protections from us.

Titouan Bernicot discovered at age 16 that the beautiful and vital corals surrounding his island home of Mo'orea were dying. Taking it upon himself to restore the reef, he founded the nonprofit Coral Gardeners. Here he tells his story.