Ripples of change | Oceana

25 Years of Oceana Campaigns

This year marks a quarter-century since Oceana set sail. Back in 2001, the oceans received less than 1% of global conservation funding, despite covering more than 70% of our planet. Overfishing and habitat loss were accelerating, and without bold action, the oceans were headed toward crisis.  

A small but determined group of funders saw both the urgency and the opportunity to protect the oceans. Five foundations — The Pew Charitable Trusts, Oak Foundation, Marisla Foundation, Sandler Foundation, and Rockefeller Brothers Fund — came together to launch what would become Oceana. Their vision was clear: empower campaigners to take on the biggest threats to the oceans and deliver lasting change.  

Since then, Oceana has grown to campaign in 10 countries and the European Union, and has helped secure more than 350 policy victories to protect marine life and support coastal communities worldwide.  

“These wins aren’t isolated — they build on one another, creating movements within countries and even across continents,” says Oceana CEO James Simon. Today, those efforts are sending ripples around the world: From Brazil, to Spain, to Belize, and beyond. 

A bottom trawling ban in Brazil 

Imagine a windy, rainy coastline, where sand meets the muddy-brown cold sea. While Brazil’s southernmost coastal state, Rio Grande do Sul, is not known for postcard turquoise waters, there’s another reason Oceana campaigned to protect these waters. Thanks to its ultra-productive, fish-filled sea, Rio Grande do Sul is one of the most important areas for artisanal fishing in the country.  

On an early morning in 2021, a fisher arrived at Rio Grande do Sul’s Quintão beach. It was 5:10 a.m. Seventeen degrees Celsius. Wind nine kilometers per hour, coming from the south. The fisher, Daniel da Veiga de Oliveira recorded the conditions to upload to his YouTube channel, a trusted reference for hundreds of fellow local fishers.   

Behind Oliveira, a net 50 meters (164 feet) long ran across the dusty brown shore, filled with hundreds of flopping green weakfish. He used a tractor to pull in the heavy net. “Thanks to the ban on trawling, look at the catch we made right on the beach,” he says. “300 or 400 kilos, easily.”  

This catch would have been impossible only a few years before. Three decades’ worth of destructive trawling had emptied the coastlines that Brazilian artisanal fishers relied on for centuries. Hundreds of trawlers fished close to shore — so close that they often ended up grounded on the beach. Local fishing companies went bankrupt due to trawlers’ overfishing.   

“We would set our nets to catch just half a crate of fish,” one fisher remembers. A sharp contrast to the piled-high nets of their grandparents’ generation.   

Meanwhile, industrial trawlers “were loaded to the maximum capacity,” says Gilmar Silva de Freitas, a fisher in São Lourenço do Sul. The trawlers left little behind. “If you put a coin at the bottom of the ocean, that coin would be dragged up by either one trawler or another.” Small-scale fishers paid the price for big commercial hauls.  

The fishers realized they needed a law to ban bottom trawling and protect their livelihoods. In 2017, Oceana partnered with the community to campaign for this law to be a reality. Oceana’s scientists also ran a study to project how the law could help fish populations recover. Within just a few years, the study showed, the sea could be full of fish again.  

Oceana and artisanal fishing communities in Rio Grande do Sul proposed a law to ban bottom trawling in the 12 nautical miles from shore. Campaigners worked alongside fishers to pressure local leaders. On Aug. 21, 2018, Rio Grande do Sul’s State Assembly voted.   

Oliveira and dozens of other fishers traveled hundreds of miles from across the state to witness the vote in the state’s capital. When the law passed unanimously, the gallery full of artisanal fishers erupted in cheers.  

The commercial fishing industry soon struck back, challenging the new law as unconstitutional. A legal battle ensued, but Oceana secured an initial ruling to keep trawlers out of the protected zone.  

By the time Brazil’s Supreme Court ultimately sided with artisanal fishers in 2023, the waters of Rio Grande do Sul had already rebounded dramatically. Oceana conducted another study that confirmed what fishers were experiencing and its research had predicted: the fish were back.  

The impact rippled throughout fishing communities. More fish and less destructive fishing meant healthier local communities. “Since the law passed, we are seeing families wanting to invest in fishing,” says Oceana’s Science Director  in Brazil, Martin Dias. “More than 20,000 families depend on fishing for a living in Rio Grande do Sul. Now a fisher can fish from shore with a small net and catch one ton of fish in a single morning.”  

Fish markets sold more fish. Fishing families filled their plates. The shipyard received orders to build dozens of new small-scale fishing boats.   

The victory also echoed beyond Rio Grande do Sul. In December 2025, the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo approved its own law to ban destructive industrial fishing in the 12 nautical miles off its coast. A similar law is in the works in Rio de Janeiro.   

Oceana’s success in Rio Grande do Sul is catalyzing a broader, state-level movement to defend artisanal fishing and safeguard the oceans — a strong indicator that Oceana’s state-by-state and country-by-country strategy is working, its leaders say.   

Beyond Brazil, Oceana has partnered with communities from lobster fishers in Chile, to small-scale fishers in the Philippines, to coastal villages in Mexico, to traditional fishers in Canada to protect their waters, livelihoods, and cultural traditions.  

“When we partner with coastal communities to protect the ocean, fish rebound and entire ecosystems and the whole world will benefit,” says Simon. Over the past quarter-century, Oceana has now protected over 10 million square kilometers  (over four million square miles) of ocean habitat. 

The fight for transparency in Europe   

When Oceana began in 2001, researchers knew surprisingly little about the whereabouts of fishing vessels. Vessels could fish in waters around the world without accountability, use the flags of other countries with lax regulations to fly under the radar, then pass their fish off through loopholes in the supply chain.  

One of the most notorious cases involved a Spanish-owned vessel, the F/V Thunder, wanted internationally for illegal fishing in the South Atlantic. Pursuit by an international fishing watchdog led to a wild, 110-day chase across 10,000 nautical miles before the F/V Thunder’s captain deliberately sank the boat off the coast of West Africa. The resulting publicity from this incident and similar ones damaged Spain’s reputation — and made it the first major target of Oceana’s transparency campaigns.   

Following Oceana’s campaigning, Spain adopted a law in 2014 to stop Spanish-owned vessels from illegally fishing, even if the fishing is happening outside the country’s waters with a vessel flagged to another country.   

Today, Spain has more vessel inspectors than any other European country. Almost every foreign fishing vessel landing in Spanish ports is checked, and fines for illegal fishing are among highest in Europe. One victory led to another, and the entire fishing sector in Spain began to transform.    

Oceana successfully campaigned for Spain to require mandatory location trackers for small-scale vessels, a measure that was championed by small-scale fishers in Andalucía, a region of Southern Spain. “The fishers were the best advocates because they were saying this worked for them,” says Vanya Vulperhorst, Oceana’s illegal fishing and transparency campaign director in Europe. 

By verifying legal fishing, the trackers help fishers to protect their reputations and secure fair value for their catch. The tracking technology also helps small-scale highest in Europe. One victory led to another, and the entire fishing sector in Spain began to transform.    

Oceana successfully campaigned for Spain to require mandatory location trackers for small-scale vessels, a measure that was championed by small-scale fishers in Andalucía, a region of Southern Spain. “The fishers were the best advocates because they were saying this worked for them,” says Vanya Vulperhorst, Oceana’s illegal fishing and transparency campaign director in Europe. 

By verifying legal fishing, the trackers help fishers to protect their reputations and secure fair value for their catch. The tracking technology also helps small-scale fishers to be safe at sea, providing authorities with the location data they need to respond to accidents.   

When Oceana set its sights on a law that would require vessel trackers on all boats throughout the EU, its Spanish allies led the way.  

“The person leading the negotiations in the European Parliament on the vessel tracking rule for small-scale vessels was from Andalucía,” Vulperhorst says. “She knew the story. When other political leaders tried to argue that installing the trackers would be impossible, she knew that was not true.”   

In July 2023, the EU adopted a landmark rule requiring all EU-flagged fishing vessels to extend tracking systems to all vessels, including 70,000 small-scale vessels by 2030, along with stronger traceability and public reporting on enforcement. The rule will help authorities crack down on illegal fishing while improving livelihoods for small-scale fishers across the EU — just as it did in Spain.  

“Our theory of change was that transforming fishing in Spain, one of the main fishing nations in the world, would influence the rest of Europe,” says Vulperhorst. “Our impact does not lie in one moment. 

We’ve been campaigning for transparency for over two decades, and the effects continue to grow. Strong relationships and alliance building are key to creating lasting change.”  

When vessels are visible and accountable, local fishers benefit, human rights abuses at sea come to light, and seafood consumers can trust what’s on their dinner plates. Today, thanks to continued campaigning by Oceana and its partners, about one-third of the world’s industrial fishing fleet can now be tracked in near-real time, revolutionizing the fight against illegal fishing. 

People power in Belize  

When the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill devastated the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, images of burning rigs and oil-soaked coastlines reverberated far beyond U.S. waters. In Belize, the disaster triggered a sobering question.  

“What if it happens here?” recalls Janelle Chanona, who leads Oceana in Belize.  

At the time, Belizeans were learning that almost all their offshore waters had already been leased for oil exploration — without public knowledge. The revelation unsettled Belizeans, whose livelihoods depend on fishing, tourism, and a healthy reef.   

Oceana filed a lawsuit and successfully defeated the secret leases. But it still needed to ensure that new offshore oil leasing would not happen in the future.  

As public concern grew, Oceana and its allies called for a national referendum on offshore oil.  

“Officials were annoyed,” Chanona recalled. When the Prime Minister declined to hold one, Oceana and its partners launched a nationwide signature drive to trigger the process for an official referendum.   

Volunteers gathered names in cities, villages, and coastal towns. The campaign saturated public space — from billboards to radio and TV ads. More than 18,000 voters asked for a referendum — well above the 10% threshold required by law to compel one. Nonetheless, the government rejected hundreds of signatures for thin, purported technical reasons.   

In response, Oceana and allies took an unprecedented step: they organized their own referendum to give Belizeans a voice.