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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Japan
Ecosystem Preservation & Restoration
Mitani Yuiko
Mobile Sea Otters cooperates with local fishermen, volunteer divers, and dive shops to eliminate and thin out sea urchins with the goal of regenerating kelp forests. Participants install a rope and a sea urchin invasion prevention net and exterminate the sea urchins in the frame. They collect and share data on the resulting rates of kelp forest degradation.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Indonesia
Pollution Reduction & the Circular Economy
Nurma Tsabita Hanifah
The goal of this project is to help establish a rainwater harvesting and filtration system on Pari Island to rebuild sustainable drinking water supply for local residents. This project also conducts educational programs for locals tourists on island resource-management.
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Startup
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United Kingdom
Ocean Data, Literacy & Research
Ellie Mackay
Ellipsis Earth scans rivers and coastlines with drones, processes these images with a uniquely-trained algorithm to create detailed heatmaps of hotspots, and advises partners on the best approaches to tackle each pollution challenge.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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USA
Blue Foods (Sustainable Protein, Fisheries & Aquaculture)
Max Diamond
This project contributes to the conservation of kelp by removing invasive purple sea urchins. Divers are paid to harvest barren urchins, which are then ranched with feedstock created from restaurant waste. The goal is to increase the economic value of barren urchins while providing food to humans and removing an invasive species that will allow kelp to grow healthy.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Japan
Pollution Reduction & the Circular Economy
Robin Takashi Lewis
mymizu is a water refill platform connecting people to locations across Japan where they can refill their water bottles for free, instead of buying bottled water. With this grant, mymizu built a stronger community of refill partners, enabling tens of thousands of community members to kick the plastic habit, further raise awareness of ocean plastics, and step up the fight against single-use plastics in Japan and beyond!
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Mexico
Ocean Data, Literacy & Research
Ibrahí Rodríguez Larreta
This project led by SOA Mexico will select and train 6 - 7 local youth to take part in the monitoring process of the selected waterbody of Todos Santos in the Baja California Peninsula. Data will be collected in regards to the water's safety for human consumption.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Philippines
Ocean Data, Literacy & Research
Bryan Madera
To promote and raise awareness about a municipal ordinance regulating single-use plastics, Save Philippines Seas and Plastic Battle will build a mobile educational display targeting market-goers and vendors in Tapaz, Capiz. The display will serve as both a food cart an "information booth" that will give out reusable bags and information to those in the market over the course of 2 months.
LEARN MOREMicrogrant
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Spain, Ireland
Pollution Reduction & the Circular Economy
Alicia Mateos Cárdenas
This project carries out clean-ups and monitoring of litter and microplastics in the Sanguino River. Primary activities include cleanup and litter characterization, analysis of water samples for microplastics by infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), training citizen scientists to maintain fieldwork, and communicating project impact with local policymakers.
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.
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