boatinternational.com • 06 2019PHOTOGRAPHY: KELVIN TRAUTMAN; GETTY IMAGES
The Visionary Award
(^2019)
OCEAN
AWARDS
THE WINNERS
Daniela Fernandez (pictured right) was a
student at Georgetown University when she
set up the Sustainable Ocean Alliance (SOA)
in 2014. “I saw a large misalignment between
the people who were having conversations
in high-level institutions such as the United
Nations and young people, who were just not
part of the conversation,” she says. She was
still a freshman when she was invited to a
meeting at the UN, and there it struck her too
that “a lot of the topics that were coming up
were about the ocean’s problems. There were
no talks about solutions.” Five years on, during
which time SOA has raised $3 million, the
Silicon Valley-based non-profit is active in
more than 130 countries, where it supports
1,000-plus “ocean-impact” projects and has
been described by Forbes as the “largest
network of young [under 35] leaders working
to protect the world’s waters.” Last year she
launched the Ocean Solutions Accelerator to
support startups developing technologies to
help “heal” the ocean. To date, there have
been five innovative beneficiaries, such as
Loliware, an edible bioplastics company
working to replace single-use plastics.
DanielaFernandez,
founderoftheSustainableOceanAlliance
RUNNER
UP
n August 2018, the British environmental campaigner
and former maritime lawyer Lewis Pugh, UN Patron
of the Oceans since 2013, completed a 49-day,
327-mile swim along the English Channel from
Land’s End to Dover. His mission was to mark the start of a global
campaign to win protection for at least 30 percent of the world’s
oceans by 2030, as well as to raise awareness of plastic pollution.
But it was also to flag up the fact that of the 290,000 square miles
of seas around the UK, only 2.7 square miles are protected from
exploitation. Pugh describes it as “Outrageous. We can do much,
much better. [And] doing the right thing has to start at home.”
In three decades of endurance ocean swimming, Pugh has
witnessed what he calls “horrifying” changes. “I began swimming
in vulnerable ecosystems to draw attention to the impact of our
actions on our oceans,” he has said, recalling the “enormous
chunks of ice” he has witnessed sliding off Arctic glaciers, areas
of “bleached coral killed by rising sea temperatures” and “the
bones of whales hunted to extinction.”
The environment he encountered in the Channel was scarcely
encouraging. He saw “virtually no wildlife. It shows that our
oceans have been very badly overfished. I also [saw] plastic on
every beach I visited, from Cornwall to Kent. We have taken the
fish out of the sea and replaced them with plastic.”
He calls his Channel feat his “toughest swim yet.” And Pugh has
a reputation when it comes to endurance. The first person to
complete a long-distance swim in every ocean in the world – in
2007, he swam across the North Pole, another first; in February
2015, he completed five swims in the Antarctic, where the water
temperature was 30°F and the air temperature –35°F; and in the
Indian Ocean he has swum the width of the Maldives, a distance
of 100 miles – he uses the publicity to draw attention to the
declining health of the world’s oceans and to encourage nations
to create marine protected areas.
Even in comparison with those endeavors, the Channel swim
presented exceptional challenges: jellyfish, storms, marine traffic,
proximity to nuclear power stations and pollution. But he insists
it was worth it. The media coverage it commanded was extensive,
and the government took notice: Michael Gove, the UK’s Secretary
of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, was on hand as
Pugh emerged from the waves after the last leg, and in September
he called for 30 percent of the world’s oceans to be protected by
2030, a target MP Thérèse Coffey called for at the United Nations
General Assembly in New York later that month. Pugh called it a
“landmark decision. If this is supported by other nations and
followed through, it will be the most important moment for ocean
conservation in history.”
Lewis Pugh
for The Long Swim
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