Sailors for the Sea and Oceana plan to join forces

Shelley Brown, Amber Stronk and Robyn Albritton - Sailors for the Sea Crew © Sailors for the Sea

Both Sailors for the Sea and Oceana's boards of directors unanimously approved the plan to combine. Sailors for the Sea will file a petition with the Massachusetts Attorney General and the Supreme Judicial Court for approval of the combination under Massachusetts Law. It should be finalized by the end of June, 2018.

We are excited to announce plans to join forces with Oceana – the world's largest international ocean conservation organization. This partnership will put more wind behind Sailors for the Sea and our mission of engaging, educating, inspiring, and activating the boating community to protect the waters we all love to recreate on. We will, of course, preserve our fantastic Sailors for the Sea brand, and the objectives of our core programs – Clean Regattas, Kids Environmental Lesson Plans (KELP), and the Green Boating Guide – will remain the same, but these programs will now be able to reach a truly global audience with this new partnership.

Oceana has over two million supporters globally, a team of top scientists and policy experts, and a proven track record of winning policy changes around the world that increase ocean biodiversity and abundance and, ultimately make the seas that we and boaters so deeply care about, healthier and more robust.

We expect our proposed combination with Oceana to be finalized soon - we are working with our legal team to seek all the necessary approvals. In the meantime, we wanted to let you know about this great news and how excited and energized we are at the prospect of further deepening our commitment to ocean conservation by combining with Oceana. We are confident that it will enable us to better serve your needs in the months and years ahead.

Sailors for the Sea, the leading ocean conservation organization that engages, educates, inspires and activates the sailing and boating community, and Oceana, the world's largest international conservation organization focused solely on protecting and restoring the world's oceans, announced today they are joining forces.

"Our board, staff and all of us are so pleased to be joining Oceana's team, "said Sailors for the Sea co-founder David Rockefeller, Jr. "This will strengthen our ability to help sailors and power boaters make a difference in saving the oceans they depend on." Oceana will continue the legacy of Sailors for the Sea through engaging the nearly 12 million strong recreational boating community on ocean conservation and will seek to unite a core constituency of sailors and boaters whose support will help win victories that will help to save the world's oceans.

"Sailors and recreational boaters are highly credible ocean leaders," said Oceana CEO Andrew F. Sharpless. "Sailors for the Sea will now help us reach them in in ways that will prove truly beneficial for Oceana's conservation campaigns."

The two entities' boards of directors, following an effort initiated by Oceana, unanimously approved the plan to combine. Sailors for the Sea will file a petition with the Massachusetts Attorney General and the Supreme Judicial Court for approval of the combination under Massachusetts law. In the meantime, David Rockefeller, Jr. has joined Oceana's Board of Directors and Sailors for the Sea board members have been invited to join Oceana's Ocean Council.

Oceana plans to maintain the office of Sailors for the Sea in Newport, RI, where staff will continue running the core Sailors for the Sea programs including Clean Regattas, KELP (Kids Environmental Lesson Plans) and the Green Boating Guide.

David Rockefeller, Jr., chairman of Rockefeller & Co., Inc., is an active participant in the nonprofit arena, especially in the areas of environment, the arts, public education and philanthropy. He founded Sailors for the Sea in 2004 in partnership with Dr. David Treadway. Mr. Rockefeller, a former member of the Pew Oceans Commission, has raced and cruised the ocean waters for over forty years, from Labrador to Miami, San Diego to Alaska, Scotland and Sweden to Turkey, and Italy.

Sailors for the Sea affiliates in Japan and Portugal will also continue their existing efforts as well as their association with the Sailors for the Sea brand while beginning efforts to support Oceana's global campaigns.

For more information about Sailors for the Sea and Oceana, please visit sailorsforthesea.org and oceana.org.