Love The Sea

Who Are Love The Sea? And What Do They Do?

Love The Sea are a non-profit organisation that aims to eradicate plastic and marine pollution from the world’s oceans. As windsurfers, the ocean is extremely important to us, so we recently caught up with Love The Sea to find out more about their fantastic initiative and how you can help.

How did Love The Sea start? 

Love the Sea began as a coalition more than 3 years ago between Surfrider, Hawaii Wildlife Fund, Sea Cleaners NZ, and Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii in support of a local & global network of ocean stewards, working towards the eradication of plastic pollution and marine debris in the world’s oceans, achieved through effective direct action, innovative educational outreach and strategic policy making campaigns.

Is this a world wide organisation or just on Hawaii?

Love the Sea works on projects locally as well as globally. Our most recent projects included our Hard to Reach Beach Clean Up on the island of Lana'i and our efforts last year included a global voyage across the pacific to 7 island nations named Eat Less Plastic. We work hand in hand with organisations addressing the issues not only in Hawaii but across the globe.

Are you always doing beach clean-ups or also inland clean-ups? 

We not only host and support shoreline clean ups but we help host the Annual Lahaina Town Clean going on 16yrs making it the largest and longest ongoing town clean up in Hawaii covering nearly 14 miles including the town of Lahaina, two boat harbours, over 7 surf spots, and many local neighbourhoods.  It was the first project I helped organise and found when I moved to Hawaii. Luckily the town of Lahaina has adopted the clean up and we now act as one of the many support organisations.  

Recently the ‘ghost net’ came onto the channel - can you tell us a bit more about this?  

What an awesome experience. There was a lot of concern for a large net floating into our channel during Whale Season. The story made it across the US and onto CNN. Kahi Pacarro from Parley for the Oceans and Mary Crowley from the Ocean Voyages Institute were highly motivating to get hands on with this so we took a helicopter up, worked with NOAA, Hawaiian paddle Sports, Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. The Coast Guard and local fisherman attempted to track the net. We were unable to find the original net due to extreme weather conditions but located a smaller ghost net which we tagged from the Helicopter and recovered by boat! 

Check out the stories at CNN here and here

How can people help out with Love The Sea? 

As a newer organisation and non-profit we have significantly grown our programs. This year we will be constantly fundraising to fulfil an operating budget of nearly half a million dollars. 6 months of our year are dedicated to clean ups and programs supporting an entire years worth of volunteers equal to every hour of 2020 being volunteered for. It's a huge jump from small and kind donations but we are excited about the future and dedicating our full time supporting our coalition and Ocean Initiatives. Please donate at www.lovethesea.org/donate.html or email matt@no-spam-pleaselovethesea.org to volunteer.

You can see a video from one of Love The Sea's latest projects @ https://youtu.be/pDZklDbbb8w