Advocate, educate and citizen science

HOW SEAWORLD PLEDGE got STARTED

In 2013 I met James Smith on twitter. We both had watched the film Blackfish and we decided to partner up and develop a website for the purposes of ending captivity of marine mammals. Our initial focus was on SeaWorld due to the film Blackfish.

You can see through the blog articles that we extended our articles to address the general exploitation of marine mammals  in zoos, aquariums, hotels and other industries that profited from marine mammal entertainment. We both had a penchant for facts and strived to put out information that was factually correct, with humor sometimes.

We faced criticism and fought hard for credibility.

please: give proper credit to our media and articles

In additional to blog articles, we created an immense amount of media, videos and custom art for that I will be sharing on different pages on this website. Please note that if you reference one of our blogs or use one of our photos, I kindly request that you provide proper credit by citing the source and including a photo credit with our names.

You can find me on Twitter for the time being. Or through the contact page. 

investigative reporting and citizen science

In addition to that advocacy, Jim and I did some investigative reporting and our articles are still on this site. We both did a lot of research on many different topics that led us in many different directions.  Some of our articles have been shared over 3000 times on social media. 

Here is an interesting article comparing marine mammals to human hostages and their perceived shared experiences. 

original taglines: take the pledge and don’t buy a ticket!

When we started in 2013 Jim and I  came out with the tagline “Take The Pledge” and this is tagline that we were originally known for.  We encouraged people to stop going to marine marks by taking the Pledge. 

I am pleased to see that our taglines live on and other organizations are using them to get this important message out to as many people as possible to end marine mammals in captivity all over the world.

YoOceans! spin off

YoOceans! was a spin-off of the work we were doing here. We obtained 501c3 status and from 2014-2018 we were very successful developing instructional material, developing presentations and bringing speakers like Ric O’Barry, Naomi Rose, Rick Wood and other scientists and advocates directly into schools all over the United States from Maine, the Midwest to Washington State. Thousands of students participated in our programs.

We partnered with National Biodiversity Teach In, a program run by Elgin, IL high school students, and the speakers we introduced to that program back in 2016 are still speaking every February  to 10,000s of thousands of students all over the world. Deborah McMullen is one of the brilliant educators that we originally worked with to help them promote this awesome student led program.

Due to lack of funding YoOceans! sadly closed it doors in 2018. YoOceans! still leaves a legacy behind that I am proud of. 

What is seaworld pledge doing now

We are getting ready to release some material that we developed a few years back  with the hope that we can make an impact with the information and data we collected. 

Stay tuned ~LAR