About
Oceana's mission is to protect and restore the world's oceans. As the world's largest international organization focused solely on ocean conservation, oceana develops targeted, science-based, three-to-five-year campaigns to achieve practical and measurable outcomes. With offices in 9 countries and the european union, oceana benefits from local knowledge and expertise that is guided by central leadership and support in our headquarters in washington, DC. Oceana employs more than 280 individuals globally. Oceana has grown from an ambitious start-up to an international organization with a record of results on four continents. Together with our allies, we have won more than 325 significant policy victories and protected more than 4 million square miles of ocean habitat. Oceana supports science-driven ocean management in the most productive parts of the world's oceans, with teams working in countries which control nearly a quarter of the world's wild ocean fisheries (by catch): the united states, the european union countries, the united kingdom, belize, brazil, canada, chile, mexico, PERU, and the philippines. Oceana's campaigns focus on SIX strategies: - stop overfishing through science-based fishery management and by deterring illegal fishing. - reduce bycatch by improving monitoring and reporting, setting bycatch limits for fisheries, and encouraging fishers to use more selective, safer GEAR. - protect habitats and the ecosystems that depend on their health. - increase transparency of fishing activity and government decision-making processes. - CURB pollution by stopping the expansion of offshore OIL drilling and reducing the production and demand for single-use plastics. - protect species threatened by extinction from destructive commercial activities. Oceana, together with our allies have made a measurable impact on the oceans: the number of sheries with management plans has increased by 55% since 2000, and the number of sheries with catch limits has increased by 47%. We have won more than 70 policies that protect threatened marine species, including sharks, SEA turtles, and whales. In 2000, less than 1% of the waters off the countries where we currently operate were protected. In 2024, that number had increased to about 17%. Around 80,000 commercial shing vessels about 20% of the world's industrial shing EET CAN now be tracked on the global fishing watch MAP in near-real time, for free. We have passed policies that would eliminate the use of 1.9 million TONS of unnecessary single-use plastic each year by 2033, equivalent to about 190 billion plastic bottles. With sound policies in place, ocean ecosystems recover, often rapidly, and abundant fisheries return, even exceeding former levels. A fully productive ocean CAN provide a meal a day for a billion people, forever. Together with our allies, we are saving the oceans to FEED the world.
In care of Chris Sharkey
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