Ocean Initiative is sponsored by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The Packard Foundation's Ocean Initiative addresses threats to ocean health, including unsustainable fishing practices, climate change, and habitat loss. It funds work to conserve marine areas, end illegal fishing, improve conditions for seafood workers, protect human rights, ensure sustainable fisheries, and advance responsible floating offshore wind energy.

The initiative focuses on the U.S., Indonesia, and Chile, among other regions.

Ocean Initiative • The David and Lucile Packard Foundation You might be looking for: Protecting and restoring ocean habitats, ensuring fair and sustainable fisheries, ending illegal fishing, and harnessing the power of the ocean to slow climate change. A healthy ocean is essential for life on Earth.

It produces half of the Earth’s oxygen, supports a wide variety of marine life, helps regulate our climate, and provides food and jobs for billions of people. But the ocean is under serious threat. Destructive fishing practices, climate change, and damage to marine and coastal habitats are putting ocean health at risk and harming the communities that rely on the ocean for their livelihoods, food security, and cultural heritage.

These communities include Indigenous peoples, coastal communities, small-scale fishers, and seafood workers. Our Ocean initiative aims to address these threats, to protect and restore the ocean for people and nature, now and in the future. To do this, we work across multiple geographic levels, focused primarily on three key issue areas.

First, we fund work to conserve ocean areas rich in marine life to ensure the ocean remains healthy and sustains communities and ways of life in the U.S., Indonesia, and Chile. Second, we fund work to end illegal fishing, improve conditions for seafood workers, protect human rights, and ensure fisheries are managed responsibly and sustainably.

Finally, we fund work to advance responsible floating offshore wind energy in California to accelerate the transition to clean energy, curb the climate crisis, and create a model that can be adapted globally. By addressing these three major threats to ocean health, we help ensure the ocean will recover and thrive for generations to come.

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