Building a More Oceanic Society
Oceanic Society was founded in San Francisco in 1969, the first American nonprofit established to protect the world's oceans. We began with a conviction that has not changed since: that people who experience the ocean firsthand become the people who protect it. In the decades since, that idea has carried us from volunteer pollution patrols in San Francisco Bay to sea turtle conservation in more than 55 countries and territories, and it still shapes every expedition we lead and every project we fund.
Founded by Sailors and Scientists (1969–1989)
George C. Kiskaddon, a San Francisco ship broker, and Dr. Jerold M. Lowenstein, a physician and molecular paleontologist, were friends and shipmates who sailed the Pacific together aboard Kiskaddon's schooner New World. Visiting island communities across that ocean, they came home convinced that something needed to exist to protect the sea those communities depended on. In 1969, with other Bay Area sailors and scientists, they founded Oceanic Society to build what they called a more oceanic society.
Their first innovation was to put members to work. Beginning in 1972, volunteer boat owners and light-plane pilots monitored water quality, tracked marine mammals, documented pollution, and ferried researchers to the Farallon Islands — all at their own expense. The program was coordinated by Michael Herz, who built our San Francisco chapter and went on to found San Francisco Baykeeper in 1989, the first Baykeeper in the United States. “The Oceanic Society had a navy and an air force,” he recalled. “We had 45 volunteers who were flying missions over the Bay, looking for polluters. A San Francisco Chronicle columnist called them "the wet Sierra Club."
One of those volunteer efforts, the Farallon Patrol, was organized in 1972 after the Coast Guard automated the Farallon lighthouse and left the researchers on the islands with no way to get supplies. It still runs, led by Point Blue, and more than fifty years on, we still take our turn.
A 1972 advertisement recruiting boat owners to join Oceanic Society's Conservation Patrol, an innovative volunteer program that monitored the oceans and advocated for ocean health.
Published by Oceanic Society from 1974 to 1988, Oceans magazine was a popular and influential magazine covering a wide range of marine science and conservation topics, as well as providing updates on Oceanic Society's work.
That same year, we launched Oceanic Society Expeditions, taking members to sea alongside scientists on ship-based journeys to the Galápagos Islands, New Zealand, Australia, the Caribbean, and the California coast. We were among the first organizations in America to lead whale watching trips – beginning in 1975 – at a time when watching whales was helping the public turn away from hunting them.
From 1974 to 1985, the organization was led by Christopher du Pont Roosevelt, a grandson of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Under his leadership, we took over publication of Oceans magazine, which reached tens of thousands of readers worldwide until 1988, opened a second office in Connecticut, grew to five chapters, and helped found the Maritime Aquarium (originally the Maritime Center) in Norwalk in 1988, which still draws close to half a million visitors a year. Our staff testified before Congress on ocean dumping, seabed mining, and the case for double-hulled oil tankers.
Merger, Dormancy, and Revival (1989–1995)
By the late 1980s, dozens of organizations were working on ocean conservation, and Oceanic Society merged into the Friends of the Earth family, continuing as its marine policy arm. The policy work went on. Our staff in Washington pressed Congress for the tanker safety reforms that became the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and its double-hull requirement, and an Oceanic Society attorney served on the National Research Council committee, commissioned by the U.S. Coast Guard, that assessed tanker design after the Exxon Valdez disaster.
What did not survive was the organization itself. The chapters dissolved, the magazine was gone, and outreach to the public stopped. Oceanic Society Expeditions, kept separate through the merger, went dormant. Birgit Winning arrived in 1990 to run it and kept it alive through the Friends of the Earth years. In 1995, she negotiated its return to independence.
Rebuilding Around Travel (1995–2012)
Birgit Winning led Oceanic Society until 2013, developing field research programs and rebuilding the organization around the idea that travel could be an instrument of conservation.
Under her leadership in 2001, we purchased twelve acres at Blackbird Caye in Belize's Turneffe Atoll and built a field station there, at a time when Turneffe had no formal protection of any kind. Through research programs both before and after, we generated twenty-two years of dolphin data and thirteen years of manatee data, worked alongside dozens of Belizean and international partners, trained hundreds of students in marine biology, and hosted thousands of volunteers and travelers. Along the way, we led long-term field research from the Peruvian Amazon to Midway Atoll, Suriname, and Micronesia.
That research paid off in 2012, when the government of Belize declared the Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve, drawn in part around the habitats our surveys had mapped. In 2019, we completed the arc by transferring our Blackbird Caye land to the Turneffe Atoll Trust to hold under permanent protection. We had come to an unprotected place, spent two decades documenting why it mattered, helped secure its protection, and then placed the land itself into permanent care.
In 2001, Oceanic Society purchased twelve acres of land at Blackbird Caye in Belize's Turneffe Atoll, at the heart of the Mesoamerican Reef ecosystem. For nearly two decades, we led research, education, and tourism programs out of the field station before securing the land's permanent protection by the Turneffe Atoll Trust in 2019.
A Global Conservation Organization (2012–Present)
In 2012, the State of the World's Sea Turtles (SWOT) program came to Oceanic Society from Conservation International, along with its founders, Roderic Mast and Brian Hutchinson. Mast became Oceanic Society's president the following year. SWOT works differently from most conservation programs. Rather than start new sea turtle projects, it strengthens the thousands that already exist. It does this through three things: the annual SWOT Report, now twenty volumes deep; the only open-access global database on sea turtle biogeography; and 201 small grants that have supported partners in more than 55 countries and territories since 2006.
The State of the World's Sea Turtles (SWOT) Report is an annual publication created for the sea turtle conservation community and distributed free of charge in support of local conservation. The 20th volume of SWOT Report featured the first Atlas of Global Sea Turtle Status.
In 2014, we began asking a harder question: How can we go beyond 'raising awareness' to ensure that our programs deliver real, lasting change? So we partnered with researchers at Stanford University to learn what actually changes what people do. Their first study gave us an uncomfortable answer: our whale watching trips shifted attitudes immediately and shifted nothing at all three months later. We published that finding and redesigned around it. Behavior change has anchored our work ever since — through the Global Ocean Cleanup, which has supported more than 200 community-led cleanups in more than 25 countries since 2022, and through the Expedition Impact Program, which turns every expedition booking into funded conservation. Today our expeditions fund cleanups in Kenya, coral restoration in Indonesia, and community-led conservation from Panama to the Seychelles.
In spite of living just a short distance from the ocean, more than 80% of our Conservation Scholars have never experienced the ocean from a boat prior to their Oceanic Society-hosted cruise.
The same conviction runs through the work closest to home. In 2017 we launched what is now the Conservation Scholars Program, taking students from Bay Area schools out onto the water free of charge. It was created in honor of Captain Roger Thomas, whose word for the wildlife, critters, gave the program its first name. More than 1,800 students have been aboard since, and for most, it is their first time on the ocean.
Our founders came home from a Pacific voyage believing that people who experience the ocean firsthand become the people who protect it. More than five decades on, that is not only our belief, but a reality that we have seen time and time again.
Our mission is to improve ocean health by deepening the connections between people and nature to address the root cause of its decline — human behavior.
Timeline of Key Events
1969–1979
1969 — Founded in San Francisco, the first American nonprofit established to protect the world's oceans
1972 — Volunteer boat and air patrols begin monitoring pollution in San Francisco Bay
1972 — The Farallon Patrol is organized to supply researchers on the Farallon Islands — and still runs today
1972 — Oceanic Society Expeditions launched, the beginning of conservation travel
1974 — Oceans magazine begins publication
1975 — First whale watching trips led out of San Francisco
1980–1989
1982 — Five chapters nationwide, from San Francisco to Long Island Sound
1986 — First long-term research program: spotted dolphins at Grand Bahama
1988 — The Maritime Center (now Maritime Aquarium) opens in Norwalk, Connecticut, an aquarium we helped found
1988 — Oceans magazine publishes its final issue after fifteen years
1989 — Oceanic Society merges into the Friends of the Earth family
1989 — Our staff in Washington begin work on tanker safety reform after the Exxon Valdez spill
1990–1999
1990 — The Oil Pollution Act mandates double-hulled tankers in U.S. waters
1992 — Amazon river dolphin research begins in Peru's Pacaya Samiria Reserve
1994 — First aerial manatee surveys at Turneffe Atoll, Belize
1995 — Oceanic Society Expeditions revived as an independent nonprofit
1995 — Spinner dolphin research begins at Midway Atoll
1997 — Country-wide crocodile survey completed in Belize
1999 — Sea turtle conservation begins in Suriname's Galibi Reserve
2000–2009
2001 — Blackbird Caye Field Station established at Turneffe Atoll, Belize
2002 — Partnership begins with Watamu Marine Association on the Kenyan coast
2003 — The State of the World's Sea Turtles program is founded at Conservation International
2004 — Community conservation work begins at Ulithi Atoll, Micronesia
2006 — First SWOT Report published, alongside the sea turtle small grants program
2007 — Ulithi Marine Turtle Program begins; loggerheads confirmed nesting at Turneffe
2010–2019
2010 — Ulithi Atoll community leaders sign a declaration of intent for locally managed marine areas
2012 — Belize declares the Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve, drawn around habitats our research mapped
2012 — The SWOT program joins Oceanic Society, arriving with its founding team
2014 — Behavior change research begins in partnership with Stanford University
2015 — Blackbird Caye Field Station closes after fifteen years of research
2017 — Conservation Scholars Program launched
2019 — Fiftieth anniversary: the Five for 50 expeditions and film series
2019 — Our Blackbird Caye land placed under permanent protection
2020–Today
2020 — COVID-19 halts international expeditions; whale watching resumes that autumn
2022 — Global Ocean Cleanup launched
2022 — The travel industry's first Traveler Plastic Pollution Offset Program in partnership with Watamu Marine Association
2025 — Twentieth SWOT Report published, featuring the first Global Atlas of Sea Turtle Status
2025 — Nearly $1 million generated for community-based conservation in a single year
2026 — Coral restoration partnership launched with Coral Triangle Center in Bali's Nusa Penida Marine Protected Area
What We Have Built Since 1969
- We pioneered conservation travel, beginning with Oceanic Society Expeditions in 1972, and we still lead more than 40 expeditions a year.
- Our volunteer patrols turned yacht owners and pilots into citizen scientists. One of them, the Farallon Patrol, has been supplying researchers on the Farallon Islands for more than fifty years, and we still take our turn.
- We were among the first organizations in America to lead whale watching trips, helping shift public sentiment away from whaling.
- We published Oceans magazine from 1974 through 1988, reaching tens of thousands of readers worldwide.
- We helped found the aquarium that opened in Norwalk, Connecticut in 1988 and now welcomes close to half a million visitors a year.
- We pressed Congress for the double-hull tanker requirement that became law in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.
- We built a field station at Turneffe Atoll when it had no protection at all, helped secure the Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve in 2012, then placed our own land there under permanent protection in 2019.
- We launched the travel industry’s first Traveler Plastic Pollution Offset Program in 2022, funding beach cleanups in Kenya for every travel booking.
- Our alumni went on to found other organizations, including San Francisco Baykeeper — the first Baykeeper in the United States.
Where That Adds Up Today
The Work Continues
Learn more about our global conservation programs or join us in the field aboard an upcoming expedition. Discover how you can get involved, or come see our work firsthand.