Duane Silverstein, Executive Director of Seacology, being interviewed between innings at the Oakland Athletics game on Tuesday, June 30, 2009.

The Manafiafy Forest in Southeast Madagascar's Sainte Luce area is one of the last remaining stands of littoral forest in the country and is home to critically endangered palms, birds and the rare brown collared lemur. Azafady, an organization based in the U.K., has been asked by villagers in the Sainte Luce area to facilitate the transfer of control over the 1,730-acre forest, in which the community wishes to ban all commercial exploitation. Members of the community who patrol the area and act as guides are forced to spend up to six hours per day getting to and from the forest, and do not have a base from which to coordinate their activities. Seacology is working with Azafady to construct four forest stations within the protected area.

Sarinbuana is a small farming village positioned 2,200 feet above sea level on the slopes of Mount Batukaru. Traditionally, the people of Sarinbuana have been the de facto custodians of a 1,975-acre section of intact rainforest above their village. The people of Sarinbuana are willing to formally endorse their role as guardians of the forest and protect it from all extractive activities. In exchange, Seacology will provide funds to construct a library/music/dance building and provide computers and musical instruments for the Sarinbuana primary school. Seacology will also provide funds for signage and a natural stepping stone pathway to an important Balinese temple located within the forest.

Manado Tua Island is a towering extinct volcano fringed with picturesque reef drop-offs and capped with a rainforest at its summit. The island's 3,200 inhabitants form a very tightly-knit community of farmers and fishermen who cling tenaciously to their Sangir cultural traditions. Large sections of Manado Tua's coral reef have been reduced to rubble fields due to blast fishing activities that took place over a decade ago. With Seacology's assistance, Manado Tua villagers have installed EcoReef modules, snowflake-shaped ceramic modules that are designed to mimic branching corals, providing shelter to fish and a surface for larval corals to build a new reef. In return, villagers have expanded their current "no-take" reef zones to include five acres of reef containing the EcoReef modules. USAID's Natural Resources Management Project and dive operators from the North Sulawesi Watersports Association did all the coordination and installation of EcoReefs for this project.

Participants of Seacology's cruise in the Red Sea, aboard the Royal Evolution, help install mooring buoys. Seacology's Project: The Red Sea coast has been designated for tourism development by the Egyptian government since the early 1980s. In 2003, the Egypts Ministry of Environment, with the support of the Red Sea Governate, declared Wadi El Gemal Hamata WGNP as a national park. The park has been nominated as a Biosphere Reserve, which will raise its potential for ecotourism and related job opportunities. Coral reefs in the area are among the most diverse (240 species) in the Egyptian Red Sea and are home to a great diversity of fish and marine invertebrates (about 1,000 species). The Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Organization (HEPCA) was founded in 1992. Their initial mooring project has evolved into the largest mooring network in the world, with over 1,000 moorings protecting reefs and wrecks. With the assistance of HEPCA, Seacology will fund the installation of 25 mooring buoys in dive sites around the areas five islands for the conservation of the marine segment of Wadi El Gemal National Park, which encompasses almost 494,100 acres.

Because of hunting for bushmeat, uncontrolled fires and logging, many roosts of the Madagascar Flying Fox, which are important pollinators, have disappeared. In Madagascar's Mangoro Region, a close network of 12 small forest fragments holds up to 4,000 of these bats. Seven nearby communities are working with local organizations Arongam-panihy - Culture, Communication and Environment (ACCE), and Lamin'asa Fiarovana Ramanavy sy Fanigy to implement a dina, or social contract, to protect the roosts. In exchange for this agreement, Seacology will provide funding for badly-needed repairs to each of the seven community municipal offices and 20 primary schools near the roosts.

An informational video on Seacology and our work.