Oceana, Inc. is a nonprofit organization that works to protect and restore the world's oceans by helping to create and change laws on a national level. It is based in Washington, D.C., and has offices in many cities around the world, including Juneau, Monterey, Fort Lauderdale, New York, Portland, Toronto, Mexico City, Madrid, Brussels, Copenhagen, Geneva, London, Manila, Belmopan, Brasília, Santiago, and Lima. It is the biggest group worldwide that works only on ocean protection.

Oceana has about 200 employees and 6,000 volunteers. As of 2017, it had nearly $50 million in revenue. The organization uses many different methods to protect the ocean, including doing its own scientific research, suggesting changes to laws, trying to get laws passed, and starting and fighting legal cases.

History

Oceana was started in 2001 by an international group of major foundations, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Sandler Foundation, and The Pew Charitable Trusts. This happened after a study they asked to be done in 1999, which showed that less than 0.5% of money spent by U.S. environmental nonprofit groups was used for ocean conservation.

In 2001, Oceana took over The Ocean Law Project, which was also created by The Pew Charitable Trusts, to use as its legal department. In 2002, American Oceans Campaign, founded by actor and environmentalist Ted Danson, joined with Oceana to work together toward shared goals of protecting the ocean.

On April 19, 2024, Oceana, Inc. announced that James Simon would become its new chief executive officer. Simon, who was previously the President of Oceana, replaced Andrew Sharpless after an eight-month search that included people from around the world.

Oceana Canada

In 2015, Oceana Canada was created as a separate non-profit group that follows the law. It works together with Oceana, Inc. and is part of a larger charity. Canadian charity rules usually do not allow Canadian offices of non-Canadian nonprofits to have legal charity status or give tax-exempt receipts. Because of this, it is helpful to create an independent, Canadian charity.

Current campaigns

Oceana is working to stop overfishing and help fish populations recover since fish catches have decreased since 1980. The organization focuses on creating laws that set limits on how many fish can be caught, based on scientific research. These limits have helped improve fish populations in the past. Oceana also opposes fishing subsidies, which it believes encourage overfishing. It also works to reduce bycatch, which is when unwanted fish or protected species are accidentally caught.

Oceana’s goal for sustainable fishing is to provide enough healthy food for people. It points out that wild fish do not require land, fresh water, or produce pollution, which makes them a good resource for feeding the growing world population. This effort is called "Save the Oceans, Feed the World."

Oceana is focused on reducing the use of plastics, especially single-use plastics, because they harm marine life and people. It does not support recycling or cleaning up ocean plastics, as it believes these methods are not effective for large amounts of plastic in the ocean.

Oceana works to stop seafood fraud, which is when fish are mislabeled. It argues that mislabeling can harm people with allergies and make it harder to track overfishing.

Some environmental news sources have criticized Oceana’s reports on seafood fraud. They argue that Oceana assumes all mislabeled fish are intentionally fraudulent, even for species that are hard to distinguish or have different names in other countries. Critics also question how Oceana chose fish for its studies, saying the samples were not representative of all fish. They also say some of Oceana’s policy suggestions are too complicated or hard to implement.

Oceana is working to address the dangers that climate change poses to oceans. It focuses on ocean acidification, which harms marine life like shellfish and coral. These species are important for ocean ecosystems and seafood supplies. Oceana also supports offshore wind farms and opposes offshore drilling and the use of seismic airgun blasting, which can damage marine environments.

Expeditions

Oceana starts expeditions to collect scientific information. This information helps Oceana, other nonprofit groups, local communities, and government agencies make or change rules.

Recent examples show success in Malta, where an expedition helped the government increase the size of marine protected areas. In the Philippines, an expedition helped the government establish a new marine protected area in the Benham Bank.

Successful efforts

Oceana works on specific laws, court cases, or policies that support its larger goals. It calls these efforts "successes" when they are achieved. Recent successes include protecting dusky sharks, banning industrial activity in Canada's marine protected areas, increasing transparency through digital tracking in Chile's fishing industry, and creating the second-largest marine national park along Spain's Mediterranean coast.

In 2017, Oceana pointed out the improper disposal of tailings from Planta de Pellets into the sea near Huasco in northern Chile. This led to Planta de Pellets agreeing in 2019 to stop this practice by late 2023.

Throughout its history, Oceana has protected 4.5 million square miles of ocean by working on laws and policies to stop bottom trawling, limit fishing, and create Marine Protected Areas. Oceana considers an area protected once a policy victory is achieved for that area.

Books

In 2013, Andy Sharpless, the CEO of Oceana, and Suzannah Evans wrote a book called The Perfect Protein. The book discusses some of Oceana's work but mainly explains the group's main goal: to ensure fishing provides enough food for people without harming ocean life. The book suggests using science to set limits on how many fish can be caught, eating fish that are lower in the ocean food chain (such as sardines), focusing less on famous sea animals like whales and dolphins, protecting ocean habitats, and reducing the number of unintended sea animals caught in fishing nets.

In 2011, Ted Danson, an actor and Vice Chair of Oceana, and Michael D'Orso wrote a book titled Oceana: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them. The book describes Danson's early work with environmental causes and explains current ocean problems, including offshore drilling, pollution, ocean acidification, and overfishing. The book is based on scientific research and includes charts, photographs, and side notes. The Los Angeles Times called it engaging because of these features.

Criticism

The California Wetfish Producers Association (CWPA), a small nonprofit group that works to protect California's wetfish industry, has often criticized Oceana for trying to pause the Pacific sardine fishery. The CWPA has pointed out problems with Oceana's use of a study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that stated 95% of the sardine population had decreased since 2006. The CWPA says these numbers are too high and that the real, smaller drop in sardine numbers is not caused by overfishing but by environmental changes. The CWPA has called Oceana's claims about overfishing "fake news." While NOAA has not yet agreed to do a new study as requested by the CWPA, it has not said sardines are overfished. However, NOAA has stopped commercial fishing of sardines.

In 2021, a Netflix documentary called Seaspiracy criticized Oceana for not being able to explain what "sustainable fishing" means. Oceana responded by saying it was shown unfairly in the film and argued that not eating fish, as the film suggests, is not a practical choice for people who rely on coastal fisheries.