Diaries of the Ocean originated as a Facebook page in 2017 that a group of marine biologists created as a way to express their interest in marine life in Lebanon and to share their passion with people in the community online. As a result of the following the page gained locally, a nearby school invited them to speak to an elementary class about sea life in Lebanon. As more classes, and eventually more schools, showed interest, Diaries of the Ocean shifted from exclusively an online platform to a physical and mobile education tool and attracted the attention of students, educators and stakeholders alike.
Diaries of the Ocean has since expanded, in both size and scope, to a dedicated volunteer women-led team of marine biologists, environmental scientists, activists, entrepreneurs and artists who carry out the awareness raising and education for local communities, help out with conservation actions and facilitate advocacy and coordination between various actors.
As anthropogenic pressures including climate change, pollution and overfishing affect marine ecosystems worldwide, corresponding changes in the chemical, physical and biological features of ocean ecosystems threaten the productivity of marine environments and the health of the species that inhabit them. Matters of ocean health are deeply intertwined with the health and well-being of human societies, given that oceans provide valuable ecosystem services—including carbon sequestration, coastal erosion protection and valuable animal protein for over a billion of the world’s poorest people — that depend on healthy and well-functioning marine ecosystems. Thus, achieving a sustainable future will depend, in part, on our ability to mobilize members of the general public to adopt behavioral changes and to support policy actions that mitigate broad-scale threats to marine ecosystems.
