12 winners of The Ocean Awards

Winner — Personality: Pharrell Williams

For — his role as creative director of Bionic Yarn

Photo of Pharrell Williams by Ned and Aya for G-Star RAW

The Personality award at The Oceans Awards goes to the person in the public eye who has done the most to promote awareness of the crisis in the oceans.

Best known for the perfectly crafted, incredibly catchy and hugely commercial songs Happy, Get Lucky (with Daft Punk) and, more controversially, Blurred Lines (written and produced for Robin Thicke), all of which have sold several million apiece, Pharrell Williams is also creative director of Bionic Yarn.

The company, founded in 2009 by Tyson Toussant and Tim Coombs in New York, produces what it calls “the world’s first high-performance eco yarn”. Using fibres spun from plastic discarded in oceans or collected from shorelines, it creates “fabrics that are as strong as they are soft” by combining them with cotton. Its first collection used 10 tonnes of recycled PET plastic bottles – 700,000 bottles that might otherwise still be at sea, endangering wildlife and marine habitats – to produce jeans and other casual apparel in a collaboration with Dutch fashion brand G-Star RAW. The autumn/winter collection bore the strapline: “Turning the tide on ocean pollution.”

Williams’ involvement with Bionic Yarn has enabled the company to partner with several higher-profile brands to spread the message, and it is now in partnership with Timberland, with which it has launched a line of boots made entirely from plastics recovered from the sea, as well as Gap and Cole Haan. “We have a connection with the ocean,” says Williams. “It yields so much life. We owe it.”

Highly commended — Helena Bonham Carter, British actress and activist

For – stripping off and being photographed naked, hugging a 27kg bigeye tuna, especially when you are, as Bonham Carter puts it, “actually very phobic about fish”. The photograph was picked up by the world’s media and went viral.

In short, it achieved exactly what Blue Marine Foundation, which organised the shoot to raise awareness for its campaign to create more marine reserves in the UK Overseas Territories, set out to do.

Highly commended — Leonardo DiCaprio, American actor

For – belying his screen personae of the doomed steerage passenger in Titanic to Jordan Belfort (whose 1961 superyacht Nadine, originally built for Coco Chanel, sank off Sardinia in 1996) in The Wolf of Wall Street, both of whom didn’t have much luck on the water. But the stellar actor and producer is a committed environmentalist and philanthropist. He has pledged to donate $7 million to ocean conservation projects, urging leaders worldwide to “make ocean viability a priority […] to ensure the health of the oceans that are so vital to people’s lives all around the world”. And last summer the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation raised $40 million through a gala evening for the preservation of the ocean and environment.

Winner — Visionary: Oliver Letwin

For — committing the British Government to the creation of an MPA around Pitcairn

Photo of Oliver Letwin by Ben Harries

Oliver Letwin, MP for West Dorset and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, has won the Visionary award because the judges felt he was the politician or thinker who had achieved the most for ocean conservation in the last year. It's his work to commit the British Government to the creation of a Marine Protection Area around Pitcairn, and to the creation of “Blue Belts” around the 14 UK Overseas Territories, that makes him a winner at The Ocean Awards.

On 10 September 2014, Zac Goldsmith MP, Stanley Johnson, the RSPB, Blue Marine Foundation and Pew Trusts presented Parliament with a pamphlet calling on the Government to commit to creating Marine Protected Areas around three of its Overseas Territories: Pitcairn, Ascension, and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

Outstanding among the politicians who supported the move and led the push towards the creation of a new MPA around Pitcairn in the southern Pacific was the Rt Hon Oliver Letwin MP, the Conservative member for West Dorset and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. This led to its inclusion of a commitment to create a “Blue Belt around the UK’s 14 Overseas Territories, subject to local support and environmental need [and] designate a further protected area at Ascension Island, subject to the views of the local community. [While] off our own coasts we will complete the network of Marine Conservation Zones that we have already started, to create a UK Blue Belt of protected sites.” This formed part of the Conservative Party manifesto, published before the May 2015 general election.

When fully implemented, the Pitcairn MPA will be the largest in the world. The waters around the Pitcairn Islands are home to some of the best-preserved marine ecosystems on the planet and are of globally significant biological value. More than 1,200 marine species have been recorded around the islands, including whales, dolphins, fish, turtles, seabirds and corals. Of these species, 48 are globally threatened, including the hawksbill turtle and the Pitcairn angelfish, which is found almost nowhere else.

Highly commended — Zac Goldsmith, MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston

For — his campaign, going back to when he was elected in 2010, for Pitcairn to become a Marine Protected Area.

Highly commended — Dr Sylvia Earle, Oceanographer and founder of Deep Ocean Exploration and Research, SEAlliance and Mission Blue

For — her efforts to increase the proportion of protected water from less than 3 per cent today to 20 per cent by 2020.

Read more

Ocean Awards 2024
Ocean Awards 2024
Ocean Awards 2024
Ocean Awards 2023

Sponsored listings