Since 2001, Oceana has achieved dozens of concrete policy victories for marine life and habitats. From stopping bottom trawling in sensitive habitat areas to protecting sea turtles from commercial fishing gear, our victories represent a new hope for the world's oceans.
The Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to prohibit commercial krill fishing in the federal waters off of California, Oregon and Washington. More than 5,000 Oceana activists contacted the Council to support a prohibition on krill fishing in the Pacific to protect our ocean ecosystem food web.
Safeway announces it is to post the FDA advice at all of its stores seafood counters. Safeway is the third largest grocery company in the United States and added 1,500 grocery stores to Oceana’s Green List.
OxyChem announced its decision to close its Delaware City, Delaware facility. This action eliminated the top mercury polluter in the state.
Oceana partners held press conferences at stores across the U.S. including at a Trader Joe’s in Philadelphia (Clean Air Council) and at Whole Foods in Boston (Clean Water Action.).
Soon afterward, Wild Oats reiterated its intent to post signs at all of its stores and actually followed through. This made Wild Oats the first company to do this and it served as a leader for others that would follow. Since that time, Wild Oats has been purchased by Whole Foods.
After two years of intensive lobbying by Oceana staff in Brussels and Madrid, the European Union prohibited destructive fishing practices, including bottom trawling, in over 500,000 square miles around the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands.
PPG announced it would switch its chlorine plant in Louisiana to mercury-free technology. This switch eliminated the largest source of mercury air pollution in the state.
A new law was passed by the European Union that imposes criminal sanctions, including heavy fines and even jail terms, for the owners, operators and financiers of boats that illegally dump oily waters and residues into the sea. The new law could prevent as much as 20,000,000 tons of polluting substances from getting into the ocean every year – the single biggest reduction in oil pollution in decades, anywhere in the world.
For years a Chilean law to place professional observers aboard fishing fleets existed but was ignored. Oceana successfully convinced the government to enforce the law and professional observers are now at last beginning to monitor Chile’s commercial fishing operations.
America's oceans won a major victory when the New England Fishery Management Council voted to protect deep-sea coral communities in New England and mid-Atlantic offshore submarine canyons from destructive monkfish bottom trawling gear. The council adopted an Oceana-supported amendment to the monkfish management plan that bans fishing for monkfish by bottom trawling in the Oceanographer and Lydonia canyons where marine scientists have identified and studied large deep-sea coral communities.
In an historic victory for protecting our oceans, and the largest such action taken anywhere in the world, U.S. authorities closed to destructive commercial fishing nearly one million square kilometers of north Pacific Ocean surrounding the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, an area equal to Texas and California combined.
Seismic airgun blasting threatens marine life, coastal communities and local economies.
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Kate Mara says it’s time to get deadly drift gillnets out of the water, and help save the whales. Add your name now before more whales lose their lives in these indiscriminate nets.
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