Sea Studios Wins Two Major Awards at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival

Sea Studios Foundation is proud to announce that we have won two awards at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival. Sea Studios won Best 360 Campaign for our Think Beyond Plastics campaign. The 360 Award is given to the campaign package that most effectively utilizes multiple distribution platforms and formats, including: broadcast, theatrical, live-event, internet, venue specific display, gaming, mobicast, and any other distribution to enrich an appreciation or understanding of the natural world and the relevant issue. Sea Studios' film Once Upon a Tide won Best Children's Film. That award is given to the program that most effectively inspires an appreciation of the natural world, or issues associated with animals and the environment, to young audiences. Kudos to all!

Mayors' Ocean Summit

On Friday, August 29, 2009 a one day event was hosted by West Marine for mayors of coastal cities from Crescent City to Santa Barbara, to discuss the dangers of plastic pollution.

The following city and state officials were in attendance: 

Hon. Sam Farr
Congress member, 17th district 

Hon. Bill Monning 
Assemblyman, 27th District

John Laird, Member
Waste Management Commission of the State of California

Carmel
Sue McCloud, Mayor
Rich Guillen , City Manager 

Carpinteria
Gregg Carty, Mayor
Dave Duflinger, City Manager

Del Rey Oaks
Joseph P. Russell, Mayor

Half Moon Bay 
John Muller, Mayor

Pacific Grove
Dan Cort, Mayor

Monterey 
Chuck Della Sala, Mayor

Morro Bay 
Betty Winholtz, Mayor

Santa Monica
Ken Genser, Mayor

Pacifica
Julie Lancelle, Mayor
Don Eagleston, Chamber of Commerce

Salinas
Dennis Donohue, Mayor

Santa Cruz 
Cynthia Mathews, Mayor
Katherine Beiers, Council Member
Ryan Coonerty, Council Member
Tony Madrigal, Council Member
Fred Keeley, County Assessor

Seaside
Ralph Rubio, Mayor

Watsonville
Antonio Rivas, Mayor
Carlos Palacios, City Manager

For more on the event, topics discussed and photos, visit this website: http://www.mayorsoceansummit.org

Terrific film festival, onto 2010

Our film festival was a real success!
We had excellent attendance, despite the beautiful day outside. Nice weather always kills movie attendance - but not in this case. People were coming in all throughout the day, talking to the partners who have set up booths, and actively participating in the panel at the end. We were very happy to welcome Anna Cummins and Markus Ericksen of Algalita, who are in the midst of their awareness campaign, called JunkRide 2000. Anna and Markus talked about sailing the Gyre and handed out samples of the "plastic soup". We concluded the evening with a wonderful sail on the Monterey Bay.
My thanks go out to our team, Wendy Goldman, Sheila Taylor and Blaise Douros, as well as the terrific volunteers who worked all day long to produce a memorable event: Peter Larson, Dalya Adams, Azucena Yzquierd, Rae Pineda and Mike Tomitz.

Think Beyond Plastics keeps growing

From Daniella Russo's moleskin

It is truly amazing to see how our campaign is growing. We launched it at the end of 2008, with a Facebook cause, a viral film hosted by Edward Norton, and a destination page www.strangedayscauses.org. Our goal was to capture the interest in Edward Norton (Bring Your Own Bag), and send viewers to the portal web page that would help direct their interest. Soon we found out that there is no singular web site that organizes news, information and social activism around plastic bags, or The Garbage Patch. So we created the pages: www.droptheplasticbag.org and www.greatgarbagepatch.org. To get people to visit, we added a call to action at the end of Edward's Video Bag The Bag. We also launched a Google keyword campaign, linking certain words to the web sites. Slowly, but surely, traffic began to flow.
Today, about 14 months after we started the campaign, our Facebook cause is almost 17,000 strong and continues to grow. Traffic to both web sites is building up.
Key to our efforts now is partnering with grass-roots organizations to reach out to the communities live, not just online.
Next I will write about working with the partner organizations.

Think Beyond Plastics gains momentum

From Daniella Russo's notes
Well, so much about writing regularly. We got real busy really fast: the campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of plastics "grew legs" in multiple communities and many grass-roots organizations. We have reached out to Surfrider, Save Our Shores, Oceana, Sea Life Conservation, Save The Whales and many others to get the message out to our communities. How? We produce thousands of CDs with outreach materials and ask people to take one and host a party. Not tupperware party, but a plastics-awareness party. As a result of our relentless focus on getting the word out, our Facebook cause Don't Trash The Ocean topped 15,000 and continues to snowball and traffic to our web sites GreatGarbagePatch.org and DropThePlasticBag.org has nearly doubled.
We must press on.

Two new web videos by Sea Studios

Dr. Sumaila, director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at the University of British Columbia Fishery Center, talks about overfishing, its impact on the Ghanaian economy, and the global ramifications of a fish shortage in Africa.


Captain Charles Moore, founder of the Algalita Research Institute, highlights some of the problems of plastic contamination.