Sustainable Ocean Alliance (SOA) activates young people, develops and implements innovative solutions, and mobilizes an ocean workforce to restore the health of the ocean in our lifetime.
Since founded by Daniela Fernandez in 2014, SOA has built the world’s largest network of young ocean leaders and supported innovative startups, nonprofits, and grassroots campaigns dedicated to solving the greatest threats facing our planet.
Two years ago at the World Economic Forum, we shared our vision with the world, and Salesforce Chair and Co-CEO Marc Benioff challenged us to accelerate 100 solutions by 2021.
Today, SOA is proud to announce that as of 2021, we have more than doubled our initial goal: we have accelerated 222 startups, nonprofits, and grassroots initiatives all over the world, each dedicated to restoring and sustaining the health of our ocean.
The Ocean Solutions Accelerator helps entrepreneurs launch for-profit ocean solutions for a sustainable blue economy by providing funding, mentorship, and other critical resources to scale their ventures and amplify their impact.
The Ocean Leadership Program (OLP) holistically supports over 6,000 global participants with the resources and networks they need to build ocean-healing solutions and to reach their full potential as ocean leaders. The OLP awards Microgrants of up to $15,000 USD to outstanding youth leaders to execute and scale their projects, and provides 72 youth-led Hubs with leadership and programmatic support.
Together, these 222 solutions for ocean restoration have touched tens of thousands of lives, restored critical marine ecosystems worldwide, invented sustainable alternatives to plastics, pioneered cutting-edge technology to illuminate the mysteries of our deepest seas and much, much more.
Each startup, nonprofit, and grassroots initiative has focused its efforts across five key areas of ocean health impact.
Learn more, and explore all 222 solutions below.
IMPACT:
15,540 metric tons of CO2 reduced, avoided, or sequestered
The fight to address climate change cannot be separated from the drive to support solutions that address carbon removal and blue carbon ecosystem development. In 2020, 31.5 gigatons of carbon (CO2) were emitted globally, with 83% of the carbon cycle circulating through the ocean. Certain marine and coastal ecosystems—like tidal marshes, mangroves, and seagrass meadows—play a critical role in this cycle by sequestering and storing what’s then known as “blue carbon.”
These ecosystems are critical to climate change mitigation. Mangroves and salt marshes, for example, remove carbon from the atmosphere at a rate 10 times greater and store five times more carbon per acre than tropical forests.
IMPACT:
1,755 metric tons of solid waste removed, upcycled, or avoided
Each year, only 9% of plastic produced ends up recycled—which results in 10 million tons of plastic dumped into our oceans every year. That’s nearly equivalent to the weight of the entire human population. These pollutants are responsible for choking marine life, destroying both marine and coastal ecosystems, and polluting our own food sources.
Today, the average person ingests over 70,000 microplastics each year (that’s 100 pieces over the course of a single meal). The solutions in this category work to reduce and eliminate items like single-use plastics. Their work in turn helps to build the circular economy, which promotes the extension of product lifecycles and aims to decrease solid waste and pollution.
IMPACT:
89,128 square meters of blue carbon ecosystems protected or restored
In addition to sustaining marine life and the communities that depend on it, coastal ecosystems account for approximately half of the total carbon sequestered in ocean sediments. These may include coral reefs, mangrove forests, kelp forests, wetlands, and seagrass beds. Together, they serve as nurseries for marine organisms and as critical areas of blue carbon capture.
However, many marine ecosystems are experiencing degradation and destruction by human activities, which not only leads to species depletion, but also releases the critically stored carbon back into the atmosphere.
Solutions in this category have monitored 150,000 kilometers of coastline for climate change adaptation planning, detected 67,000 whales to avoid marine collisions, produced 150+ ocean literacy reports and media projects, hosted 260 events with more than 30,000 youth participants, and much more.
More than 80% of our ocean is unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored. In the United States, only 35% of the ocean and coastal waters have been mapped with modern methods. In order to inform policy decisions that ensure marine and coastal ecosystem sustainability—and to empower humans worldwide to take local action to save the ocean—we need reliable data sources, mapping, and consistent analysis.
Some projects in the category of ocean literacy, data, and research focus on data collection and analysis, while other initiatives are dedicated to fostering knowledge-sharing and creating local opportunities for action. All play critical roles in leveraging knowledge and technical skills to catalyze lasting ocean impact.
Every year, 30% of commercial fish stocks are overfished, while harmful fishing practices cause over 38 million tons of bycatch (the incidental capture of a non-target species). As a result, this institutionalized overfishing has contributed to a marked decrease in recorded marine species over the last 40 years.
Sustainable protein, fisheries, and aquaculture solutions address the challenge of sustainably feeding the world's growing human population without the continued exploitation of marine habitats and species.
SOA’s solutions in this area are varied, with many developing new, innovative systems of impact tracking. One Microgrant project is developing a supply chain around selling “gourmet” sea urchins in order to quell California’s invasive purple sea urchin population explosion. Another is piloting a CSA-style delivery service in the Philippines to support seasonal, sustainably caught seafood. Our Accelerator alumni are hard at work in this area as well, developing plant-based alternatives to seafood (think kelp burgers, kelp jerky, and cell-cultured tuna), net sensors to reduce bycatch, deepwater solar irrigation for seaweed farming, and more.
Microgrant
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Kenya
Carbon (CO2) Reduction & Blue Carbon
Josphat Nguu
Mikoko Pamoja is one of the world's first Blue Carbon mangrove projects. Founded in 2010, they train community members on mangrove planting and reimburse them with carbon credits. This project implements the usage of clay pots to house mangrove nurseries—rather than plastic bags. Local women produce the pots and teach participants how to make their own.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Brunei
Ocean Data, Literacy & Research
Shaima Misli
SOA Brunei conducted an Ocean Leadership Camp called AdvocaSEA Camp, which brought 30 youth leaders together from various schools in Brunei to do a capacity-building program focused on marine conservation. The participants will also have the opportunity to form collaborations and pitch a project at the end of the program, which may be given a small grant- funding of which may be provided by partnership with the U.S. Embassy in Brunei.
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Startup
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United Kingdom
Pollution Reduction & the Circular Economy
Karen Scofield Seal & Charlie Bavington
Oceanium has developed a proprietary, green biorefinery technology to process seaweed into high demand products including plant-based food & nutrition ingredients (protein, fibre) and circular life-cycle materials. By “making the market” for farmed seaweed, Oceanium will catalyse the sustainable seaweed farming industry and pioneer the development of a new, environmentally friendly aquaculture industry in the Western Hemisphere and developing world.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Kenya
Blue Foods (Sustainable Protein, Fisheries & Aquaculture)
Dyna Jamlick
SOA Kenya and Aquablue aim to promote aquaponics in Kenya as a method of sustainable organic crop production, aquaculture and water consumption. They are proposing a community training program, which could benefit the community economically through the sale of vegetables produced. This project is directed towards Mtepeni Community in Kilifi County, Kenya through SOA Hub- Kenya and a blue economy youth group initiative (Aquablue).
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Indonesia
Carbon (CO2) Reduction & Blue Carbon
Indri Addini
Led by the organization CarbonEthics, project Bintang seeks to use lessons learned from blue carbon conservation in the Thousand Islands to scale up their efforts in Bintan Island, Indonesia. The project will focus on blue carbon restoration in Bintan Island through mangrove seed diversification and research as well as seagrass research.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Kenya
Carbon (CO2) Reduction & Blue Carbon
Maulidi Mwinyikai
This project planted nearly 1,000 mangroves (Rhozophora mucronata) across 36 hectares in the coastal areas of Port Reitz Creek in coastal Kenya. As part of the project, 50 people were also trained in sustainable bee keeping, with the aim of empowering them to generate revenue from the sale of honey and related goods.
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Startup
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Slovenia
Pollution Reduction & the Circular Economy
Mojca Zupan
PlanetCare has designed the only purpose built microfiber filter that has been independently tested to capture over 90% of the fibers of all size ranges before they leave the drain pumps. The filter is installed as an external attachment to washing machines. As part of a closed loops system, cartridges are collected after use and reused/recycled.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Malaysia
Ocean Data, Literacy & Research
Melissa Beata Martin
This team will digitize the data of 1,000 key specimens at the South China Sea Repository and Reference Centre (RRC) so that data on Malaysian marine biodiversity can be made accessible to researchers and the general public, rather than just the researchers that work at RRC.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Malaysia
Blue Foods (Sustainable Protein, Fisheries & Aquaculture)
Mohamad Nor Azra Md Adib
The project addreses the dual threat of overfishing and climate change to berried females of blue swimming crab in Straits of Tebrau, Gelang Patah, Johor, the Southern Peninsular of Malaysia. This area used to be the prolific spawning ground of the berried females until stocks were depleted in the 2020s.
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