That’s a really good question. Well, Love the Oceans didn’t start as everything we do now, it started off much much smaller and has expanded and grown over the years. When we first started it was just me and Pasquale, our community Outreach Manager. We were just doing fisheries work and community outreach but with basic marine resource management to 10 – 13-year olds. From there we’ve built a different project every year. In 2017 we started the Humpback Whale research and proper ocean trash research. In 2018 we added a trash management section turning the waste into eco bricks and we added more in depth Humpback research then too.
Our OCC program was born in 2018 and 2019 was our first group trip – a lot of our funding comes from eco-tourism. We started taking school trips out into Mozambique and launched our photography workshop with ‘Photography Without Boarders’ which then lead onto a documentary on us as well.
We expanded properly in 2020 into the Turtle research, which we wanted to operate as a best practise, to bring an area up to its best standard it can be. We employed 21 indigenous people to provide support to them and their families.
It’s been a slow progression. Our community outreach has been really integral to help cultivate that passion for marine conservation and the ocean conservation program, in particular. Its literally all about kids getting to enjoy the water, not fearing it and wanting to protect it. So that’s been really integral in building our network in the grounds of Mozambique.
We launched a free online series during the pandemic that runs weekly and features different conservationists from around the world talking about their work and what they do. We pride ourselves on a holistic approach, which is why we like having such a diverse team as it brings a completely different angle to the table and that’s really important when thinking about a well-rounded approach.