Bill Weil's Contact Details

Bill Weil's Company Details

Oceanites

Washington, Washington, United States • 9 Employees
Nonprofit Organization Management

Oceanites is a scientific and educational nonprofit organization, founded by Ron Naveen in 1987. Its mission is to advance science-based conservation and to increase the awareness of climate change, its potential impacts, and climate change adaptation through the lens of Antarctic penguins.Since 1994, Oceanites' Antarctic Site Inventory (ASI) has monitored and analyzed penguin and seabird population changes across the vastly warmed Antarctic Peninsula. Significantly, the ASI is the only nongovernmental, publicly supported, scientific research project working in Antarctica — and the only project monitoring penguin population changes across the entirety of the Antarctic Peninsula. In that region, it's warming as fast as anywhere else on Earth (over the last 60 years, by 3˚C year-round and by 5˚C in the austral winter).Since 2016, Oceanites has maintained the Antarctic continent-wide penguin population database known as MAPPPD (penguinmap.com). This database is an open access decision support tool that assembles Antarctic penguin population data and makes the data free and accessible to the public. The MAPPPD database is continually being updated and is utilized by Oceanites to generate its State of Antarctic Penguins reports, which comprehensively summarize the ongoing status — population size and population trends — of Antarctica's five penguin species.Regarding policy making in Antarctica, Ron Naveen has served as an advisor on the United States Delegation to the Antarctic Treaty Meetings and, for the last seven years, Oceanites has been an invited, international expert observer to meetings of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, which manages fishing of Antarctic krill and toothfish.Oceanites also focuses its efforts to promote education and outreach by providing the best available scientific information into the hands of everyone.