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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USA
Carbon (CO2) Reduction & Blue Carbon
Marcus Lehmann
CalWave’s mission is to unlock the vast and steady carbon-free power from ocean waves (ESG Whitepaper). They bring superior power and monitoring technology to market with a global reach. Their proprietary wave energy converter technology achieves high performance while surviving storms and extreme conditions operating fully submerged.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Canada
Pollution Reduction & the Circular Economy
Alexa Goodman
Stop Trashing It is a network of youth helping people shift awareness into action when it comes to living lighter on the planet. They aim to ease these habit changes and encourage self-accountability through workshops, digital communications, and action campaigns.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Russia
Ecosystem Preservation & Restoration
Olga Mironenko
This social simulation of deep sea mining allows users to become members of the International Seabed Authority Advisory Council. Users will be able to learn about the issue, debate, and ultimately create recommendations for the ISA on deep sea mining.
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Startup
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Germany
Ocean Data, Literacy & Research
Joost den Haan, Hannah Brocke, & Guy Rigot
Planblue is building up a global seafloor database in high detail using our Underwater Satellites, to foster a sustainable Blue Economy. Why the seafloor? It plays a key role in solving climate change, biodiversity loss and plastic waste pollution. Unfortunately, we cannot properly grasp the seafloor's true economic and ecological value. Planblue does this by combining AI with advanced imaging and underwater navigation.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Australia
Ocean Data, Literacy & Research
Heidi Dumesich
The mission of SOA Australia is to be the overarching hub to support all of the hubs across Australia as well as be their space for individuals and companies to learn about the importance of the ocean. Their first projects included webinars and online events to connect young leaders from across Australia and build the network.
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Startup
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USA
Blue Foods (Sustainable Protein, Fisheries & Aquaculture)
Jacek Prus & Sonia Hurtado
Current Foods (formerly Kuleana) is creating the next generation of seafood with plants and biotechnology. After going through Y-Combinator's S20 batch and raising $6.5M Pre-Series A, Current Foods has products across the country with an initial foodservice focus.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Indonesia
Ocean Data, Literacy & Research
Mikhael Tefa
Divers Clean Action Network (DCA) created a learning platform for youth leaders by holding campaigns and webinars with the topic "Let's Talk About Deep Seabed Mining in Indonesia" (Bahasa Indonesia: Yuk, Ngobrolin Deep Seabed Mining di Indonesia) that was incorporated into monthly SOA Indonesia webinars. Along with raising awareness and understanding, they aim to equip the Indonesian population to monitor the government and industries Deep Seabed Mining activities and regulations in order to prevent more environmental damage to our oceans.
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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Brunei
Pollution Reduction & the Circular Economy
Shaima Misli
River Clean-Up Operation (RECOVER) is a collaborative community service project conducted by SOA Brunei, YSEALI and Save Kampong Ayer to gather solid wastes found along the Brunei River in Kampong Ayer (Water Village). This project aims to provide immediate short-term relief to solid waste discarded in the environment by engaging volunteers and the local Kampong Ayer community through the collective effort of a mass river clean-up.
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