Sharks at a pristine reef at Millennium Atoll, southern Line Islands, Kiribati
Photograph by Enric Sala
Photograph by Enric Sala
One of National Geographic’s newest Explorers-in-Residence, Dr. Enric Sala developed a passion for the sea while growing up on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. Witnessing the adverse impacts that pollution, overfishing, climate change, and industrialization were having on marine ecosystems, he dedicated his career to finding ways to restore health and productivity to the ocean.
To help save the last pristine places in the ocean, Sala has mounted a series of National Geographic expeditions to some of the most remote, uninhabited and untouched sites on the planet. These include a magical place in the remote South Pacific, the Southern Line Islands. Beyond shipping lanes and fisheries and far from human civilization, Sala discovered there what a healthy reef looks like—with crystal clear water, abundant multi-colored corals, and an amazing abundance of top predators. Sala has led other expeditions to places such as Cocos Island, Costa Rica, and Sala y Gomez, Chile. He has shared the stories of these stunning places through National Geographic films and publications.
Using a combination of science and media, and partnering with local conservation organizations, Sala has succeeded in inspiring country leaders to protect some of these pristine places. Now, he is racing to help establish a series of marine protected areas around the world to save the remaining pristine places that are still unprotected.
A former professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and at Spain’s National Research Council, Sala is now leading the Pristine Seas project at National Geographic. He is also a 2005 Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow, a 2006 Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation, a 2007 National Geographic Emerging Explorer, and a 2008 Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum. In 2011 he was named a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence.
Learn More About Enric:
Pristine Seas is an exploration, research, and conservation project that aims to find, survey, and help protect the last healthy, undisturbed places in the ocean.
The impacts of humankind on marine ecosystems has been profound. Restoring more of our oceans to a healthy state promises to reap surprising ecological and economic benefits
A team of scientists led by Dr. Enric Sala journeys to five remote islands in the Pacific to explore pristine coral reefs and the shark populations that inhabit them.
National Geographic’s Ocean Now is a project to study the last healthy, undisturbed places in the ocean. Join Dr. Enric Sala and a team of scientists as they spend six weeks exploring the pristine waters of the southern Line Islands in the South Pacific.
In this brief video interview, Enric Sala relates the importance of protecting much more of the ocean.
Too many hooks in the water. That’s the problem with today’s fisheries. Working from small pole-and-line boats to giant industrial trawlers, fishermen remove more than 170 billion pounds of wildlife a year from the seas. A new study suggests that our current appetite could soon lead to a worldwide fisheries collapse.
A rare, pristine reef turns out to be a landscape of fear, where predatory fishes reign and their prey is in hiding.
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