Interview: Climate Advocate and 5Gyres Ambassador Madeleine Wallace

By Nuri Max Steinmann. Madeleine Wallace is a 23-year old artist and climate advocate, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is a visual artist, a multi-instrumentalist, and a spirited environmental activist. In 2018, she completed her undergraduate degree at Barnard College, pursuing an Environmental Policy major. As an ambassador and advisory board member of…

Fighting plastic pollution and poverty at once: The Plastic Bank

By Hannah Schartmann. Shaun Frankson is Co-Founder of the Plastic Bank – a project to stop ocean plastic pollution. The motivation of this project is obvious: every minute of every day, tons of plastic get into the ocean worldwide. This amounts to around eight million tons of plastic per year. It is estimated that there…

Thamarasi Aththanayaka: A conservation story from Sri Lanka

By Thamarasi Aththanayaka and Alyssa Robinson.  Hello, I am Thamarasi Aththanayaka from Sri Lanka. I don’t know whether you have heard about my small country, which is actually an island in the Indian Ocean. We are lucky to have a beautiful ocean with sandy and rocky beaches, as well as coral reefs, mangroves and seagrass…

Interview with Lauren Fritz – Founder of The Greenest Blue, marine naturalist and writer

By Jennifer Worth. Lauren Fritz is a writer, wildlife photographer and marine naturalist who has spent the last few years country hopping all over the world as a wildlife guide for various marine based eco-excursions. Her passion for the ocean and its inhabitants has taken her from Hawai’i and the San Juan islands in the…

Smoking kills – not only you

By Leona Ritter von Stein. The problem of plastic pollution in the marine environment has become quite popular over the last few years, thanks to many great people out there, who have opened their eyes and hearts, and raised their voices to increase awareness. NGOs, private initiatives and even politics have taken action and reached…

Interview with Raquel Gaião Silva – Winner of the GBIF’s 2018 Young Researchers’ Award

By Nuri Max Steinmann. Raquel Gaião Silva is a recent MSc graduate in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation from Portugal and just won the 2018 Young Researchers’ Award, which is assigned by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). She was awarded for her thesis project about the impact of climate change on the distribution of marine…