Hot off the press: Looking Back while Planning Ahead – A summary of efforts and opportunities to engage the public and advance conservation

As we enter a time of expanded collaboration for a more equitable and sustainable society and a healthier blue planet, The Ocean Project team wanted to summarize the successes and lessons learned from our efforts working with our network of partner zoos, aquariums, and museums. Our hope in doing so is to support this community on its exciting trajectory to advance conservation in creative and collaborative ways.

As we all fully know, the world around us is currently in a time of crisis, faced with the public health and economic impacts of a pandemic, as well as crises facing our planet’s shared ocean and climate. Additionally, it is quite clear that there is no environmental justice without social justice, and the social justice movement continues to grow rapidly in exciting ways. Much of this new report was written pre-Covid, and it also is aimed at the longer term, with a spirit of hope around where we see promising opportunities to grow our collaborations in mobilizing the public to take action for our communities and our blue planet.

These opportunities form the three sections of this report: engaging onsite visitors at aquariums, zoos, and museums, empowering youth, and leveraging social media. All of these efforts have been built upon the solid foundation of our market research, summarized here, and these efforts will evolve just as aquariums, zoos, and museums evolve, to be leaders in their communities for diversity, equity, and inclusion, and also to create a sustainable society and a healthy ocean that we all need to survive and thrive.

The Ocean Project fully recognizes the tremendous challenges that our partners face right now and also hope that soon we will be able to return to a full focus on collaborating with you to create positive outcomes and a better future!