By Georgienne Bradley, Executive Director, Sea Save Foundation.
Georgienne is the founder and executive director of Sea Safe Foundation, and co-owner of Bradley Productions, one of the world’s largest underwater still photography and video stock houses. As a well-known conservationist, she is instrumental in protecting the wildlife of the remote Cocos Island, a National Park off the coast of Costa Rica.
Sea Save Foundation is an ocean conservation non-profit group that strives to protect our oceans by raising awareness about the beauty of marine ecosystems and their fundamental importance to human survival. We seek solutions, advance public policy, and drive advocacy. Our goal is to preserve and improve the health of the oceans for the next generation.
Our key strategic methods are education and advocacy. We aim to inform and translate scientific discoveries for our stakeholders through our electronic weekly publication, “Ocean Week in Review” (OWIR). This weekly digital digest is a one-stop-shop for ocean-related news with article summaries and links to primary publications.
We have a strong social media presence on multiple platforms where we draw our following into OWIR. Our advocacy work is aimed at connecting our stakeholder community directly with decision-makers, enabling our people to weigh in on the ocean issues of the day.
Endangered species protection, prevention of coastal oil and gas drilling, plastic pollution prevention, and ending shark finning are among the many critical advocacy actions Sea Save Foundation has championed.
Sea Save Foundation strives to protect our oceans and their marine ecosystems
Sea Save Foundation believes, as did Jacques Cousteau, that people protect what they love. Education and advocacy efforts form the core of Sea Save Foundation work.
While Sea Save Foundation is based in Malibu, California, our origin is in Costa Rica at Cocos Island. Cocos Island is a Costa Rican National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and an ocean natural treasure. This island, part of the Cocos Ridge, is located approximately 300 miles off the west coast of the Costa Rican mainland.
Similar in scientific value to the Galapagos Islands, Cocos Island has an advantage: it’s a tropical rainforest full of diverse, isolated, and in some cases endemic species.
This unique and fascinating island has inspired the settings for “Jurassic Park” and “Treasure Island” and continues to inspire great minds today.
The island is surrounded by vaulted cliffs and, other than national park guards and visiting scientists and students, the island is devoid of a permanent human community.
The same remoteness that has allowed this island to maintain its pristine state also constitutes a threat to the island’s ecosystems.
Out of sight and out of mind, only a handful of fortunate tourists and ship crews visit the island each year. A 36-hour ship crossing from the nearest port, Cocos Island is popular among poachers. Every so often, large groups of poaching fishing ships surround the island with huge nets, scooping up and cutting off the fins of protected sharks.
Dedicated park guards and park rangers who patrol the island can only do so on an intermittent basis, leaving the island vulnerable. Having UNESCO World Heritage Site status gives would-be supporters a false sense of security for the Island’s protection.
As principal contributors to the original petition making this island a UNESCO World Heritage site, Sea Save Foundation leaders are uniquely positioned to protect the island from poachers who decimate the island’s animal populations. We will reach out to regular visitors to the island such as park rangers, guards, and scientists to relay information about their trips and the condition of the island. Using this information, we seek to inform people of the scientific value and sheer beauty of Cocos Island and its inhabitants to engage them as we ask for their help in protecting it.
Cocos Island is a World Heritage Site and one of the world’s premier diving destinations. Its protected waters serve as an underwater hub for large marine congregations. Sharks, dolphin, turtles, huge schools of jacks, rays, and many other animals are permanent residents or pass by the island during migrations. This spot is not only beautiful but because it has minimal human settlement, it serves as a vital baseline for scientific study.
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Sea Save Foundation leaders have been coming to Cocos Island since 1989. We will return to Cocos this year aboard the Sea Hunter from May 3 -14, 2019. This 10-day live-aboard experience will be a SCUBA diver’s dream expedition.
Support ocean conservation, Sea Save Foundation and Immerse yourself in the undersea treasure that is Cocos Island.