Today, World Oceans Day, is a good day to reflect and ask ourselves some questions. What is the future of our seas and oceans? How do overexploitation and pollution affect marine ecosystems? What about their wonderful habitats? What will happen to endangered species? What does ocean acidification mean? What impact is all this going to have on our lives?
Undoubtedly these and many other questions are very much on our mind today, but the truth is that it is difficult to find a single answer for each one of them. Even so, and without knowing exactly how we can be part of the solution, we are all aware that we have to do something about it.
For this reason, today more than ever we must listen to scientists. They have dedicated years of study and research to understand everything that affects the seas and their ecosystems. Thanks to their deep and well-founded knowledge, they are able to make forecasts, tell us where we are going and what we could do to respond to the challenges we face. Along the same lines, today it is important to look at sustainability entrepreneurs, dreamers who embark on apparently crazy and impossible projects to rescue endangered species, recover ecosystems that are deteriorating, or to protect those corners free of human activity that are still in our oceans. Finally, today we must also pay attention to private initiative, starting with each one of us and continuing with the possibilities offered by companies with a soul, which are more and more numerous, which have sustainability programs and resources to help good causes. Undoubtedly, all of them are important in the conservation and regeneration of our seas, but let us dare to dream: what if they could work together?
The answer is found in the Bluewave Alliance. It is a non-profit initiative that was born with the vocation of uniting the scientific community, dreamers with sustainable projects, volunteers and companies under the same objective: to recover the health and beauty of our seas and oceans. This alliance, a meeting space in which the challenges and opportunities of our seas will be made known, will promote projects with a positive and real impact on our lives. A project that was born with a focus on the Mediterranean Sea, our sea, since in addition to being the cradle of cultures, diversity and beauty, it is also the sea that suffers the most from the aforementioned excesses and problems. Being a closed sea, it becomes the perfect laboratory to learn and find solutions that, once verified, can be taken to other parts of the world and thus have a greater positive impact globally.
And all this will begin on June 12 in Barcelona, the Mediterranean capital par excellence. Initiating the movement on Illa Diagonal, with a symposium led by scientists, entrepreneurs and companies with a purpose that will analyze the current situation of the Mediterranean, will present the challenges it faces, as well as the present and future projects that will promote its conservation and rejuvenation.
A very special day that will end with the first edition of the Bluewave Awards, awards that will recognize three heroes and world leaders: Dr. Enric Ballesteros, a researcher specializing in marine ecology who has dedicated his life to the study of marine ecosystems throughout the world; Dr. Enric Sala, marine biologist and founder of National Geographic's Pristine Seas Project, which dreams of protecting those remote places that remain in our oceans free of human activity; and Manu San Félix, marine biologist who created the Vellmarí Association committed to the recovery of Posidonia in the Mediterranean.
With all this, the Bluewave Alliance is a dream for all of us who love our seas and oceans, and an invitation to stop being part of the problem and be part of the solution.
Dare to Dream. No Surrender.
