Featured Image Credit: NOAA/PIFSC/HMSRP
Happy World Oceans Day 2017! What are your plans, today? Joining a beach clean up in your area? Pay attention to recycling, starting today? Look at some pictures featuring the ocean and some of its amazing inhabitants? Or maybe you just want to tweet about the awesomeness that is oceans by posting something using #WorldOceansDay to join those involved and maybe even inspire someone else!
All of these things are great ideas!
There are some people though that have World Oceans Day practically every day. And while they’re not tweeting or looking at pictures, they’re doing everything that they can to clean up and help out our environment all the time. And learning more about them and what they do— as well as considering helping them out, too, might be a good way to get involved even further today!
Chances are, you’ve heard of these guys. They’re a pretty big leader in climate research, and strive to make the information they gain available to the public and use this knowledge to look out to the oceans, and to work on what the change in climate and environmental conditions could mean for our marine ecosystems.
Since the beginning, the Ocean Conservancy has been focused on saving our marine life. Doing what they could to aid numerous species in our oceans— whales, sea turtles, seals, and more. But they’ve expanded, since then. Saying that “we realized we couldn’t protect species without protecting their habitat. So we thought bigger and shifted to a more ecosystem-based approach.” And since 1986, they’ve hosted International Coastal Cleanups to help not only our beaches, but our oceans become a healthier, less waste-filled place.
Organizations that support research, projects, and conservation are just as important as those that do it. The Save Our Seas Foundation is doing just that! They offer grants and partnerships with those working to make a change and protect our oceans around the world.
Committing to learning everything that they can about the ocean and its relationship to… well, everything else (i.e, the atmosphere, ice, the seafloor, life, and humanity) is a pretty big mission, but it’s one that WHOI is taking in an awesome stride. Their goal, along with using their scientific and technological advancements to find more about the ocean is to provide that information to the public and to “expand public awareness about the importance of the global ocean and its resources.”
The focus for Oceana is to create a much more bio-diverse ocean for everyone, everywhere. To achieve this goal they want to make the ocean a protected place, by campaigning with science-based research and working with countries who “govern much of the world’s marine life”. What they do includes creating science-based catch limits, reducing bycatch, and protecting habitats of life below the ocean.
As you can probably tell from the name, the Coral Reef Alliance is majorly focused on conservation and restoration of coral all around the world. And with our ocean’s coral reefs in crisis, this type of action is the most crucial to saving our environment.
Scripps states their mission clearly: “Seek, teach, and communicate scientific understanding of the oceans, atmosphere, Earth, and other planets for the benefit of society and the environment.” And as a part of the University of California, San Diego as well as part of Birch Aquarium, they have quite the ability to reach a lot of people with that mission.