Voices of a Healthy Ocean

A Healthy Ocean Coalition Production

We live on an ocean planet that sustains us all.

The ocean covers 70% of Earth. That's the same percentage of water that makes up the human body. It gives us the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food that sustains us.

There is no substitute for all the benefits that nature provides.

When you think about a healthy ocean, what do you see?

Swaying kelp forests?

Swirling schools of fish?

Boisterous families playing on the beach?

Maybe you find yourself revisiting a favorite childhood memory. No matter what you’re envisioning, the reality is every living thing on Earth needs a healthy ocean to survive and thrive. 

But the ocean is struggling. The weight of the climate crisis bears down on it, threatening the very balance of life.

This is a call to action. A call that cannot be ignored.

We, the  Healthy Ocean Coalition , are answering that call.

We understand the power of unity and serve as a rallying point for change. 

Together, we can forge a path towards environmental justice and ocean conservation by creating a space for empowerment, growth, and support.

Not Your Average Road Trip

We believe that the people that make up our community are the best part of the Healthy Ocean Coalition. They are brilliant, dedicated leaders that are beacons of hope and change in the world. Together, we are shaping the future of ocean conservation and it is our pleasure to introduce you to some of them here.

You're about to embark on a journey with the Healthy Ocean Coalition’s leadership team, Sarah Winter Whelan and Jenna Valente. We invite you to hop in, buckle up, and join us. Along this adventure you will meet some of our community members and learn about their impactful advocacy work to connect, empower, and reforge their communities.

This is not just any old road trip, this is a road trip with a purpose, a road trip with meaning. 

Who We Are

Since 2009, the Healthy Ocean Coalition has been fostering space for advocates to grow, connect, support each other, and collaborate to advance ocean conservation and environmental justice. Our community is made up of hundreds of local, regional, and national advocates across the United States working for a healthy ocean, access to nature, and their communities. 

Our organization formed around the recognition that every advocate and the campaigns they work on are unique like a glass of seawater teaming with life, stories, and wisdom. But, unfortunately, many do not receive the support, funding, and recognition they deserve. 

We are driven by connections. Everything that we do at the Healthy Ocean Coalition is designed to uplift and empower our community members, including this platform. 

Welcome to the Voices of a Healthy Ocean platform. As you explore these pages, you will meet some of the incredible changemakers that make up the Healthy Ocean Coalition and learn how you can support them.

This is a co-created, collaborative audio-visual celebration designed to shine a well-deserved spotlight on those activists who are working to make the ocean and their communities healthier, more just places.

During this series, Sarah and Jenna, take to the open road with their podcasting mics and team of local videographers to visit some of the best, brightest, and boldest in ocean advocacy.

The story maps on this platform spotlight advocates that are integral to the work of the Healthy Ocean Coalition and highlights their work to connect, empower, and reforge the communities they live and work in.

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Mac Cardona

Mac Cardona is passionate about engaging communities with science and nature, especially those that are still underrepresented in the sciences. With her background in wildlife biology, science and nature storytelling, and Latinx community engagement, Mac founded cWave Labs. cWave Labs is a creative lab that helps leverage creative strategies and digital technologies to help communities connect, learn, collaborate, and innovate. In the process, Mac and cWave Labs’ diverse team develop content, design programs, facilitate events, workshops, and build collaborative platforms. Mac is especially interested in increasing Latinx representation in all kinds of storytelling.

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Shanna Edberg

Shanna is the Director of Conservation Programs for Hispanic Access Foundation where they lead a team that plans and executes programming to advance national conservation and climate goals while serving Latino communities. Shanna is a longtime conservation advocate and promoter of environmental justice in the U.S. and abroad. Shanna lives in urban Baltimore and looks to their local streams, parks, and the Chesapeake Bay for a nature connection. But that connection isn’t accessible for every Baltimore resident, which is emblematic of a larger issue facing urban landscapes across the country: equitable access to nature. One of Shanna's goals, both personally and professionally, is to increase access to nature for Latino communities - in particular through walkable neighborhoods and public transportation. With their experience as a queer Jew with an invisible disability, she knows that our collective need for liberation ties us all together, people and planet.

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Amber Doherty

Amber Doherty is the Conservation Community Coordinator for the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Her expertise lies in community organizing, planning facilitation, and educating people on the importance of diversity, equity, justice, and inclusion. Amber is motivated by the recognition that human diversity is just as important to the health of our social systems as biodiversity is to ecosystems. Her focus on the social dimension of sustainability brings a holistic lens to planning, holding space, and collective learning. 

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Hermina Glass-Hill

Hermina Glass-Hill is an eco-harmony advocate, ocean conservationist, and cultural historian who is committed to protecting the ocean’s biodiversity, bringing coastal communities into deeper reflections about our ocean heritage, and fighting for justice for our neighbors on land and under the sea. She is the Founder of the Susie King Taylor Women’s Institute & Ecology Center and Georgia Field Representative for Oceana who has been a voice for environmental justice and human rights for more than 20 years.

The Voices of a Healthy Ocean Team

The Voices of a Healthy Ocean Project is a collaborative effort, driven by the relationships forged between Healthy Ocean Coalition staff and three HOC community members. Get to know our amazing team behind the platform. 

David Riera is the visionary behind the Voices of a Healthy Ocean project. In partnership with the HOC leadership team, the team sought out a way to amplify the advocates that make up the HOC community. This project is intended to uplift voices for ocean, climate, and justice advocacy, each shining beacons like lighthouses. These change agents serve their local communities who most often are left alone with the worst of burdens of unjust and unconsulted environmental policies.  

David wears numerous hats in his South Florida communidad locally pero reaches across county, state, national where he serves as a HOC Advisory Board member, and even country lines in his work.

We might not yet fathom our ocean, but within David water run deep!

Mac Cardona is the Producer, Editor, and inaugural story-sharer of the Voices of a Healthy Ocean project.Without Mac’s talent, drive, and tenacity, this project would not have happened. She identified and booked the local filmmakers and coordinated connections between Jenna and Sarah while they were on the road to the local crew. From there, Mac then took the raw video by the filmmakers and edited them into the videos you see today on this platform.

The best way to learn more about Mac is to  check out her story  in her own words.

Isabella Briseño Elalfi is the Voices StoryMap and GIS Lead. She developed the entire StoryMap Platform and led in creating the visual and content flow.  

Bella graduated from Penn State University in May 2023 with majors in Environmental Resource Management and Political Science. She has conducted undergraduate research using ArcGIS StoryMaps to showcase diverse perspectives for comprehensive ocean solutions. Bella serves as the undergraduate representative on the Ocean Advisory Council under the Hispanic Access Foundation.

Sarah Winter Whelan, Jenna Valente, and Jennifer Felt are the HOC’s dynamic staff trio. Sarah and Jenna were the inaugural road trip team in 2022, with Jen joining for the summer 2023 installation.

Sarah is the Executive Director of the Healthy Ocean Coalition. For over fifteen years she has worked to protect the ocean as a lawyer, advocate, and researcher. Today, she’s happy educating and engaging people in positions of power by raising and amplifying the voices of ocean lovers who know why it is so important that we protect the ocean from the worst impacts of climate change.

Jenna is the Director of Advocacy for the Healthy Ocean Coalition. Her passion is centered around empowering individuals and organizations to learn more about natural systems, the impacts humans have on those systems, and bolstering an ethic of stewardship, conservation, and social responsibility. She is dedicated to building support for just conservation policies because she believes in the power of community and has seen the progress that can be achieved when policies and plans are inclusive and reflective of those they will inevitably impact.

Local Talent & Expertise

An integral part of this collaborative effort was ensuring that the advocate profiles were captured by locally-based photographers and filmmakers. Mac Cardona worked incredibly hard to find and secure teams who lived and worked in the areas we were visiting. We are grateful for the filmmakers we partnered with on this project for the time and talent they poured into this collaboration.

GEORGIA

 M.A.D. House Productions  is the brainchild of dynamic duo Mackleen Desravines and Doryan Sparkman. As a cinematographer and director pair, both have worked in the field for a combined 15 years and are award-winning filmmakers. They have worked together on various sets for commercials, movies, music videos, and web television series. 

Doryan and Mackleen filmed our visit with Hermina Glass Hill in coastal Georgia. 

STATEN ISLAND

Chris and Xiomara Hope make up the B3lieve-N-Hope Photography. Based in the heart of Connecticut, they’ve been capturing memories through photography and film since 2008. Chris and Xiomara filmed our visit with Mac Cardona on Staten Island.

BALTIMORE

LCL + Film. Lee Timmons is the Founder of Baltimore based production company, LCL + Film. Lee has been sharpening her skills as a narrative storyteller since 2015. She relies equally on both visuals and soundtracking to connect with viewers on a visceral level. Through her Lee colored lenses, she strives to tell stories that represent those most marginalized and underrepresented in an authentic and genuine manner.

Lee filmed all of our visits in Baltimore with both Shanna Edberg and Amber Doherty.