Eye-Catching Designs Made from Recycled Plastic Bottles
The company sells a range of eco-friendly items like leggings, rash guards, and board shorts that are made using recycled post-consumer plastic bottles. There are currently 16 causes represented by distinct marine-life patterns, from whale shark research and invasive lionfish removal to sockeye salmon monitoring and abalone restoration.
One such organization is Get Inspired, a nonprofit that specializes in ocean restoration and environmental education. Get Inspired founder, marine biologist Nancy Caruso, says supporting on-the-ground efforts is one thing that sets Waterlust apart, like their apparel line that supports Get Inspired abalone restoration programs.
"All of us [conservation partners] are doing something," Caruso said. "We're not putting up exhibits and talking about it — although that is important — we're in the field."
Waterlust not only helps its conservation partners financially so they can continue their important work. It also helps them get the word out about what they're doing, whether that's through social media spotlights, photo and video projects, or the informative note card that comes with each piece of apparel.
"They're doing their part for sure, pushing the information out across all of their channels, and I think that's what makes them so interesting," Caruso said.
And then there are the clothes, which speak for themselves.
Advocate Apparel to Start Conversations About Conservation
Waterlust's concept of "advocate apparel" encourages people to see getting dressed every day as an opportunity to not only express their individuality and style, but also to advance the conversation around marine science. By infusing science into clothing, people can visually represent species and ecosystems in need of advocacy — something that, more often than not, leads to a teaching moment.
"When people wear Waterlust gear, it's just a matter of time before somebody asks them about the bright, funky designs," said Waterlust's CEO, Patrick Rynne. "That moment is incredibly special, because it creates an intimate opportunity for the wearer to share what they've learned with another."
The idea for the company came to Rynne when he was a Ph.D. student in marine science.
"I was surrounded by incredible people that were discovering fascinating things but noticed that often their work wasn't reaching the general public in creative and engaging ways," he said. "That seemed like a missed opportunity with big implications."
Waterlust initially focused on conventional media, like film and photography, to promote ocean science, but the team quickly realized engagement on social media didn't translate to action or even knowledge sharing offscreen.
Rynne also saw the "in one ear, out the other" issue in the classroom — if students didn't repeatedly engage with the topics they learned, they'd quickly forget them.
"We decided that if we truly wanted to achieve our goal of bringing science into people's lives and have it stick, it would need to be through a process that is frequently repeated, fun, and functional," Rynne said. "That's when we thought about clothing."
Support Marine Research and Sustainability in Style
To date, Waterlust has sold tens of thousands of pieces of apparel in over 100 countries, and the interactions its products have sparked have had clear implications for furthering science communication.
For Caruso alone, it's led to opportunities to share her abalone restoration methods with communities far and wide.
"It moves my small little world of what I'm doing here in Orange County, California, across the entire globe," she said. "That's one of the beautiful things about our partnership."
Check out all of the different eco-conscious apparel options available from Waterlust to help promote ocean conservation.
Melissa Smith is an avid writer, scuba diver, backpacker, and all-around outdoor enthusiast. She graduated from the University of Florida with degrees in journalism and sustainable studies. Before joining EcoWatch, Melissa worked as the managing editor of Scuba Diving magazine and the communications manager of The Ocean Agency, a non-profit that's featured in the Emmy award-winning documentary Chasing Coral.
The photos, featuring a dolphin, beluga and orca, respectively, show each animal breaking the water with their backs. Drops splash around them as they land from an aerial trick. Upon closer look, the viewer will see the drops of water are, in fact, broken glass. Each visual is accompanied by text that tells the true story of the mammal in the poster.
"That was the idea behind this campaign—to look closer and see what really happens to animals in marine parks," said Nicolas Dumenil, the Paris-based art director who created the designs for Sea Shepherd. "Going from a splash of water to a smash of glass was a simple but powerful way to illustrate the cruel reality of captivity. Marine parks work hard to hide what people should not see and work harder to engage in disinformation each time an animal dies in their parks."
Dumenil said he wanted to use stories of actual captive marine mammals for the campaign to remember and honor all of those who met similar tragic fates. The hardest part was choosing which ones to spotlight, especially as new deaths occurred, including the November 2016 passing of Aurora and Quila, a mother and daughter beluga pair who died nine days apart at the Vancouver Aquarium.
"Who will be next?" asked Dumenil. "Bucky, the 47-year old captive dolphin in Australia who is still jumping through hoops despite his history of cancer?"
The art director said he grew up surfing in the oceans as a child and as such, was always concerned with the marine life around him.
"Now that I'm in a creative position, I felt it was time to take action," stated Dumenil. "I have long admired Sea Shepherd's commitment to save marine wildlife and am honored to team with them on this campaign. I hope the real-life stories of Hugo, Sharky and Nanuq can serve as reminders that animals are not here for our entertainment and must not be held prisoners, deprived from their natural settings and social structures."
Sharky and Nanuq were both held captive at SeaWorld properties, while Hugo was kept at the Miami Seaquarium. SeaWorld and other similar facilities have come under fire in recent years with blistering campaigns by animal activists since the 2013 release of the SeaWorld-critical documentary Blackfish.
"Every year Sea Shepherd's Cove Guardians document the atrocious dolphin drives in Taiji, Japan, where cetaceans are being slaughtered, torn apart from their families and transported to concentration camps masquerading as marine parks," Sea Shepherd Founder, president and CEO Captain Paul Watson said. "Nicolas' images are a wakeup call for those who think these animals actually like spinning in the air and giving rides to trainers on their backs."
Sea Shepherd COO David Hance agreed. "Having witnessed firsthand the atrocities in Taiji, I can attest to just how horrific life is as a captive prisoner in these parks," he said. "A captive life is no life for any animal. I hope everyone can make the humane and moral choice not to support marine parks this holiday season, or any season for that matter."
Southwest Airlines has announced yesterday that they will end their long-standing partnership with SeaWorld at the end of this year.
In January, Sea Shepherd called upon Southwest Airlines to end the 25-year partnership and remove SeaWorld marketing from their planes. We even proposed a partnership of our own, and showed the airlines how great their planes would look if, instead of SeaWorld’s imprisoned orcas, they sported Sea Shepherd’s Jolly Roger—a logo that represents protecting marine life, not exploiting it. Though it doesn’t sound like they’ll be taking us up on our offer just yet, we are happy to report Southwest listened to calls to end the relationship from activists worldwide and is going to be removing SeaWorld’s name and images from their planes.
The companies have stated that they came to a mutual decision to end their relationship, with Southwest calling it a “business decision” to direct their focus internationally. But based on the enormous positive response that Sea Shepherd received following our proposal to Southwest Airlines, and the ever-growing backlash against SeaWorld in the wake of the ground-breaking documentary Blackfish, it is almost certain that the concerns of the public about SeaWorld’s treatment of its captive animals played a deciding role in Southwest’s decision.
As Sea Shepherd’s Cove Guardians have documented time and time again in Taiji, Japan, there is bloodshed behind the aquarium industry. In Taiji, in the infamous cove, entire pods of dolphins and small whales are driven in by boats and either killed or separated from their family forever to become a performing spectacle in captivity. They’re sent not only to marine parks in Taiji but elsewhere around the globe. The captive selection occurs simultaneously to the slaughter, despite claims from Taiji officials and fisheries. It is undeniable–the captive marine mammal industry, of which SeaWorld is a key player, is inextricably linked to the killing of wild marine mammals.
Though SeaWorld emphasizes that they do not have animals from drive hunts like the one in Taiji, recently they quietly received a permit from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to import Kirara, a Pacific white-sided dolphin who was born in captivity in Japan, but whose wild parents were kidnapped from their ocean home. They will also obtain wild-caught beluga whales from Russia, if the Georgia Aquarium succeeds in their lawsuit against NOAA to import them into the U.S. and scatter them to various aquariums and parks. This is all in addition to the blood already on SeaWorld’s hands—a grim history of animals dying prematurely in their “care” and trainers being injured and even killed by stressed, desperate captive whales.
Sea Shepherd applauds Southwest Airlines’ decision to fly into a future that is becoming more and more possible—one in which tanks are empty and the oceans are full, in which the killing ends in Taiji because people will no longer support the captive industry that funded it, and in which cetaceans are finally left to swim freely in their ocean home with their families.
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