Oceana was established in 2001 by an international group of leading foundations including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Sandler Foundation, and The Pew Charitable Trusts. This followed a 1999 study they commissioned, which found that less than.5% of all resources spent by U.S. environmental nonprofit groups were used for ocean conservation. In 2001, Oceana absorbed The Ocean Law Project, which was also created by The Pew Charitable Trusts, for Oceana's legal branch. In 2002, American Oceans Campaign, founded by actor and environmentalist Ted Danson, merged with Oceana to further their common goals of ocean conservation.
Oceana Canada
In 2015, Oceana Canada was established as a legally distinct non-profit organization. It works in collaboration with Oceana, inc. and is considered part of the larger charity. Except under very specific circumstances, Canadian charity law does not grant either legal charity status or the ability to issue tax exempt receipts to Canadian offices of non-Candadian nonprofits, making it much more benficial to create an independent, Canadian charity.
Current campaigns
Responsible fishing
Concerned about declining fish catches since 1980, Oceana is committed to combating overfishing and restoring the world's fisheries. It mainly focuses on legislation for scientific based catch limits, which have led to dramatic recoveries of depleted fisheries in the recent past. It also opposes fishing subsidies, which it argues are contributing to overfishing. Oceana also focuses on reducing bycatch, especially of protected or endangered species. Oceana's main focus with sustainable fishing is providing clean, plentiful food. They often cite the lack of emissions or resources, like land or fresh water, that wild fish require, and that this lack of pollution or resources would be necessary to feed the world's growing population. This campaign is called "Save the Oceans, Feed the World."
Plastics
Oceana focuses on curbing or entirely eliminating the use of plastics, especially single use plastics due to their harmful impact on marine ecosystem and on human consumers. The organization generally opposes focusing on recycling or cleanup, and it says this is due to inefficiencies of recycling that large amounts of plastics in the ocean.
Seafood fraud
Oceana has led the way on exposing and advocating against seafood fraud. Its opposition comes from the widespread nature of this problem, the negative health impact mislabeled fish can have and their impact on overfishing by obscuring its impact.
Oceana launches expeditions to gather scientific data, which is used by Oceana, other nonprofit groups, local communities, and governmental agencies to create or influence policy. Recent examples of these expeditions' success can be seen in Malta, where an expedition led to the Maltese government expanding marine protected areas, or in the Philippines, where an expedition led to the government creating a new marine protected area in the Benham Bank.
Victories
Oceana focuses on influencing specific legislation, lawsuits, or other policies, which fit under its broader goals. It calls these "victories" when successful. Recent victories have included protecting dusky sharks, banning industrial activity in Canada's marine protected areas, increasing transparency through digital tracking in Chile's fishing industry, and creating the second-largest marine national park in Spain's Mediterranean coast. Over the course of its existence, Oceana has protected 4.5 million square miles of the ocean.
Books
''The Perfect Protein''
Andy Sharpless, the CEO of Oceana, and author Suzannah Evans wrote The Perfect Protein in 2013. While it mentions some of Oceana's achievements, it focuses on its main goal: to make fishing a sustainable and abundant food supply. The main recommendations and goals of the book are science based catch limits, eating fish lower on the food chain, focusing less on more glamorous sea creatures, protecting habitats, and reducing bycatch.
''Oceana: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them''
Actor and Oceana Vice Chair Ted Danson, along with Michael D'Orso, wrote the book Oceana: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them in 2011. It describes Danson's early involvement with the environmental movement while also explaining the problems that face our oceans today, such as offshore drilling, pollution, ocean acidification, and overfishing. The book is scientifically grounded and was called engaging by the Los Angeles Times because it is filled with asides, charts, and photographs.
Criticism
Responsible fishing
The California Wetfish Producers Association, a small nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving California's wetfish industry, has repeatedly criticized Oceana's attempts to temporarily halt the Pacific sardine fishery. CWPA criticized Oceana's citation of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study that reported 95% of the sardine stock had been depleted since 2006. CWPA claims that these numbers are inflated and that the actual decline in fish stock has not been caused by overfishing, but rather by environmental factors. The CWPA has specifically called Oceana's claims about overfishing "fake news." Although the NOAA has not fully responded to the CWPA's calls for a new study, it has not declared sardines overfished, but it has also banned commercial fishing of sardines.
Seafood fraud
Various environmental news outlets have published op-eds criticized Oceana's reports on seafood fraud, and similar criticism was included in a New York Times article. Criticism focuses on Oceana's assumption that all mislabeled seafood is intentionally fraudulent, even for species that are easily confused or have different names in different countries. The methodology of Oceana's studies has also been questioned, mainly due to its selection of historically mislabeled fish for testing instead of a more representative sample. Additionally, they criticized policy recommendations that Oceana recommended in their reports for being infeasible and bureaucratic.
