Happy holiday season!

Thank you to all the organizations from around the world that are involved in our partner network and working to advance conservation. Together, we are making a real difference!

We hope The Ocean Project’s work to support our partners over the past year – and for nearly 20 years – has been helpful to you in becoming even more effective for conservation, especially focusing on public and youth engagement.  Our team of 2.5 FTEs is always looking for better ways to help our network of partners so please let us know if you have any suggestions on how we can best support you in achieving your mission!

Throughout 2018, The Ocean Project looks forward to helping you in the following ways:

• Support you with strategic and innovative communications, technical support, and amplification – Helping our partners with effective education and communication for conservation outcomes is what we’re all about. We continue to conduct research, keep track of other key research, and share all with our network of partners. We continually share best practices with our network. Let us know if you are doing something related to conservation engagement that you’re particularly excited about so we can amplify through our network of approximately 2,000 organizations in over 125 countries – and reaching even more through social media, guest blog posts, etc. Also, if your organization is not yet a partner in our growing global network, please join here (free and no obligations).

• Promote opportunities for our partners around World Oceans Day – Lots going on for 2018! We’re developing new multilingual marketing and educational resources and tools, as well as creating exciting opportunities for partners. The special conservation action focus for 2018 will be on plastic pollution prevention and helping with solutions for the third straight year, and we will provide ways to help our partners, members, visitors and the public take action, together, on the scale necessary to bring about real change.

• Continue to grow global youth initiative – We continue to create collaborative opportunities for youth worldwide to unite for the ocean, working closely with our Youth Advisory Council (YAC), partner youth groups, and others. We plan to double the size of the YAC for 2018 and will announce the new members in mid-January. Please let us know if you’d like to get involved with this growing youth network. And Sea Youth Rise Up 2018 is coming soon!

• Conduct sustainable fisheries initiative – In the US, we’re working in coordination with AZA and ACP, focusing on the reauthorization of the nation’s principal fisheries law, the Magnuson-Stevens Act, to help aquariums and zoos inform public policy and ensure sustainable fishing and healthy marine ecosystems into the future.

• Partner with key on collaborative visitor engagement initiatives, building on the success of the Innovative Solutions Grants+ program and related collaborative activities with our partners.

• Leverage our network to facilitate connections for conservation – We’re continually brokering strategic connections, both geographically and topically, with our partners and other ocean groups and experts from our network of nearly 2,000 organizations

• Promote our partners as key community anchors for conservation leadership – As a reminder, we don’t try to brand The Ocean Project, but we do aim to help our partners increase their brand recognition as conservation leaders in their communities and beyond through recognition on our social media channels and communications with our global network.

Finally, The Ocean Project is a nimble and collaborative organization and we take advantage of strategic opportunities as they arise, to help our key partners so there may be some changes in 2018.

Enjoy the holidays and thanks again for all you are doing for our ocean!