Oceana Wins Prestigious Silver Anvil Award of Excellence for Successful Campaign to Protect Dolphins
Oceana's "Save Flipper: Don't Kill the Dolphin Deadline" Campaign Galvanized Key Congressional Support
Washington, D.C. (PRWEB) June 18, 2007 -- Oceana, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the world's oceans, just won a Silver Anvil Award of Excellence for their "Save Flipper: Don't Kill the Dolphin Deadline" campaign. The Silver Anvil Award is presented annually by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) to organizations who have successfully addressed a contemporary issue with exemplary professional skill, creativity and resourcefulness. Oceana is one of 104 organizations who won awards out of 855 entries.
"Oceana is greatly honored to be recognized by the Silver Anvils for our Save Flipper campaign," said Courtney Sakai, campaign director at Oceana. "When we first started this campaign, most environmental groups had already given up fighting this issue and doubted we would be successful. As a non-profit conservation organization with limited resources, we had to be doubly creative and strategic to stop Congress from eliminating a key protection for dolphins and other marine mammals from the Marine Mammal Protection Act," said Sakai.
More than 30 years ago, Congress enacted the Marine Mammal Protection Act to protect dolphins, whales and other ocean animals from harm by human activities, such as commercial overfishing. Most important is a requirement that commercial fisheries reduce the killing and injury of marine mammals to insignificant levels under a set timeline -- coined by Oceana as the "dolphin deadline."
Most recently some members of congress wanted to delete the dolphin deadline from the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Without this provision, tens of thousands of animals, including dolphins and whales, would continue to be harmed or killed each year. To defend these animals, Oceana launched a multi-year campaign involving the help of the "Dolphin Brigade," a group of flippered friends that visited Capitol Hill, and successfully stopped Congress from passing legislation that would have eliminated the deadline.
Oceana is currently focused on several campaigns, one of which aims to reduce global fisheries subsidies, which are a principal driving force behind overfishing worldwide. The campaign revolves around ongoing negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to ban or significantly reduce massive government subsidies currently being provided by many countries to their fishing sectors.
To achieve its goals around fishing subsidies, Oceana works diligently with WTO delegates in Geneva as well as with the U.S. Administration and Congress to advise them on this issue. The group is also a formal advisor to the U.S. Trade Representative on environmental issues and leads a dedicated task force on fisheries subsidies. Oceana recently achieved a major victory after both the Senate and House unanimously passed resolutions to call for an end to harmful fisheries subsidies.
"Our campaigns achieve real benefits for the oceans through focused strategic approaches," said Sakai. Sakai is also Chair-elect of the PRSA Environmental Section.
To learn more about Oceana and its current campaigns, please visit www.oceana.org.
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