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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Mexico
Ocean Data, Literacy & Research
Nerea Álvarez Rodríguez
This project is part of a Master's degree thesis in Marine Ecology that explores the Oxygen Minimum Zone (OMZ) on the Mexican Tropical Eastern Pacific coast near the Gulf of California. With SOA funding, this project would use the Winkler method to conduct dissolved oxygen titrations to study the variability of the oxycline in relation to the presence of mesoscale processes in the seasonal cycle, including coastal currents. This would contribute to knowledge on OMZ permanence, distribution, and formation, which is pressing since OMZs are expected to expand under climate change.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Brazil
Ocean Data, Literacy & Research
Caroline Schio
Junior Coastal Monitoring was founded in 2012 as a citizen science program to provide an experience for children to connect with the ocean and become Junior Ocean Guardians. The Microgrant supported this project's efforts to reach more children through new pedagogical strategies . In 2020, they created an online Ocean Minicourse for children in Portuguese, and now aim to translate this to English and Spanish.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Philippines
Blue Foods (Sustainable Protein, Fisheries & Aquaculture)
Allan Carlos Apelo
SeaCrate is a new model that Tindagat is piloting in Metro Manila to encourage sustainable fishing. This project is a CSA-style subscription model to connect customers with bi-monthly deliveries of seasonal, sustainably-caught fish from their partnered small-scale fishers.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Honduras
Ocean Data, Literacy & Research
Timna Varela
Green School, Blue Future Curriculum is an ocean literacy project that intends to be the first officially accredited Environmental Education Program within the Bay Islands, implementing it in Punta Gorda, Honduras. The program will target environmental issues within a fishing community that deters efforts towards marine conservation, and it will develop an engaging culture of conservation within the school community.
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.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Romania
Ocean Data, Literacy & Research
Marian Paiu
SOA Romania and NGO Mare Nostrum will use a sailing yacht to collect data regarding cetaceans (a bioindicator) and marine debris/litter (a pressure indicator) in Romanian coastal waters. They plan to share their results at local and national levels in order to inform national authorities and civil initiatives working towards coastal management, conservation, and more.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Belarus
Ocean Data, Literacy & Research
Irina Ponedelnik
Although the Belarusian government considers ocean sustainability a low national priority, young people disagree and want to take action. As part of the Youth Initiative for Sustainable Development, this project held 5 informal lessons in 5 districts of the Minsk region (Belarus) to educate young people aged 14-20 about global ocean pollution. The final interactive event in Minsk took place in the Global Jam format, where young people came together and developed collaborative projects and solutions to the problems in Belarus pertaining to SDG 14.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Brazil
Ocean Data, Literacy & Research
Giovanna Scagnolatto
Project Transformar works with youth and low income students in Parati City to provide online marine biology classes and take them on scuba-diving excursions to bring the ocean to life for them. They will create a short documentary following 5 students and documenting their experience. This will be used to advertise the program and continue to get youth involved in future courses.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Bali
Ocean Data, Literacy & Research
Janis Argeswara
Conducting 50 research dives to study the demographics and reproductive ecology of manta rays in the Nusa Penida MPA will inform tourism management to ensure that their habitats are being conserved. For this project, 50 dives will be conducted at the Manta Bay and Manta point sites to obtain data regarding sightings and size measurements of the manta rays, with stereo-photogrammetry data also being collected.
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