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.
Startup
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Bahamas
Ecosystem Preservation & Restoration
Gator Halpern & Sam Teicher
Coral Vita grows climate change resilient coral up to 50x faster to restore dying reefs using a land-based farming model to scale up restoration, selling this service to customers who depend on the ecosystem services that reefs provide.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Eleuthera
Ecosystem Preservation & Restoration
Casey Harris
The Bahamas Coral Innovation Hub is a collaborative research and restoration initiative between The Cape Eleuthera Institute, Perry Institute for Marine Science, and The Nature Conservancy, aiming to reverse the decline of Bahamian reefs. This project uses the latest photogrammetry technology and methodologies to efficiently monitor coral restoration success and disseminate findings, providing baseline information about the resiliency of coral genotypes local to Eleuthera.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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USA
Ecosystem Preservation & Restoration
Shelby Thomas
Ocean Rescue Alliance's hybrid coral bio-engineered wave reduction modules (WRMs) plan to sustainably mitigate coastal infrastructure damage while bolstering a vibrant coral reef ecosystem. A new reef module will be created to protect coastlines through reducing wave energy while creating biologically important habitats.
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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Honduras
Ocean Data, Literacy & Research
Trent Tresch
A group of researchers led by Trent Tresch will conduct multiple deep-sea dives to study the six gill sharks and the presence of microplastics at depths of 1000-2,500 feet off of Roatan, Honduras. The footage and findings from their research is shared through a display at a local museum, and SOA is partnering with them to share their project to raise awareness of the ways human impacts are being felt even at the depths of the ocean.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Japan
Pollution Reduction & the Circular Economy
Akio Sakamoto
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Umi o Tsukurukai, this project involved a clean-up in Yamashita Park, both in the park itself and underwater by scuba diving in the Port of Yokohama.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Kenya
Pollution Reduction & the Circular Economy
Dyna Kagendo
Land-based solid waste is the biggest contributor to marine litter along the Kenyan coastline. This team's overall goal is to help reduce and promote recycling of marine litter generated on Kenyan beaches for healthy oceans and healthy communities. They will implement a waste management program through beach and river delta clean ups, which will not only reduce the volume of waste in Mombasa's ocean/coast, but also bring economic benefits to the communities by promoting recycling and upcycling.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Cape Verde
Blue Foods (Sustainable Protein, Fisheries & Aquaculture)
Gelson Monteiro
Cape Verde is now one of the last refuges in the Northeastern Atlantic for sharks, and Brava Island is a hotspot for more than 60 species of sharks and rays. Through this project, Biflores (a local NGO) aims to empower local communities and fishermen to protect their natural heritage by providing them with knowledge, training, and tools to sustainably improve their livelihoods, protect sharks, rays and other marine resources, and understand the vital role of sharks in marine ecosystems.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Spain
Pollution Reduction & the Circular Economy
Martí Morató
Go Zero Waste is an App (iOS and Android) that shows plastic-free alternatives for everyday items and then shows where to buy it in your area. The app challenges users to start a zero-waste lifestyle with new sustainable habits and rewarding them with a gamification feature.
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