Overview
Our oceans are facing a catastrophic biodiversity decline. Coastal communities often lack incentives to protect marine animals and continue to kill even endangered species. Ocean Eye is an innovative technology solution that provides a financial benefit to coastal communities which is linked to the long-term recovery of marine animal populations through an application that facilitates small tourism payments for each animal sighted during a trip.
Our Story
We are Sari, Mareike, Simon and Paul, a team of ocean lovers, conservation experts and a tech developer. We have been working in the global marine conservation arena for decades and have developed ocean eye to meet the key conservation challenge we often face -- stakeholder buy in.
With Ocean Eye we can finally start giving rewards from marine tourism directly to the people who most depend on the hunting and killing of these animals, the coastal communities. This technology allows secure and transparent payment that is for the first time linked to species recovery, creating a powerful incentive for behavior change and conservation.
We already raised over 6000 USD in our campaign in June, which has allowed us to incorporate Ocean Eye into a legal entity, to develop our business plan, develop a prototype app as well as identify first pilot sites for testing the prototype and began field operations.
We now need funds to develop the full minimum viable product. Given the complexity of the features and high level of security required this is estimated to cost another 25 000 USD.
What We Need & What You Get
-We need 25 000 USD towards the development of the minimum viable product and to properly launch Ocean Eye.
-For individuals donations of 500 USD or over you will get your name on our website and for companies with donations of 1000 USD or over you will get your logo as a sponsor on our website.
-Donations of 100 USD or over will get a digital marine life photograph and a personal thank you note.
-After the application is ready we can start implementing in the field and we will send all donors over 50 USD success stories of marine life numbers and community benefits one year after the application is launched so you can stay tuned and really see what wonderful impact your donation had.
-For donation of 10 USD and over you will get personalised thank you note.
The Impact
We and our many colleagues working in the biodiversity and marine conservation sectors believe this innovation is a game changing idea, especially in the developing country context where coastal communities lack incentives to protect marine life. Science has demonstrated that number one factor in successful marine protected areas is stakeholder buy in. This is what Ocean Eye is working at. It will enable a direct and transparent payment from tourists to the community and provide them an incentive to protect sharks, turtles, manta rays, dolphins and many other marine animals instead of killing them for short term cash.
As an example, shark fin is priced at 600 USD a kilo, a real example of shark sightings at a dive operation in Papua, Indonesia showed that if one shark sighting by divers was priced at 50cents, the local community would have received 4653 USD over one year as direct payment. Creating a real financial incentive to control shark fishing in the community.
It will also empower the tourists and the marine recreation sector to be part of the solution and provide a tangible benefit to the communities in the area they visit. In addition this app can provide much needed citizen's science that can further improve the conservation of these species.
Risks & Challenges
We are engaging an experienced tech company that has worked with community interphases to do our app to ensure it will work well in various community and tourism situations and provide flexible enough functions to tailor the species and prices i.e. high end tourists vs budget destinations and to be able to adjust the species according to local issues and biodiversity.
The app has big potential to scale as it does not need ongoing NGO support or funding. The tourism sector can adopt it themselves to use in their areas to help achieve conservation outcomes.
There is always a risk involved when working with communities in conservation and we are consulting broadly with groups and experts in marine conservation and community work that will help us establish guidelines and best practices to ensure the best long-term environmental and social impacts and to mitigate unwanted consequences.
Other Ways You Can Help
Please spread this campaign and the need for urgent action to halt biodiversity decline in our oceans. We have no time to waste. Join our mailing list on https://oceaneye.io for more updates. Thank you!
