Sea Alarm plays a unique role amidst responders, governments and industry, serving as coordinator for many aspects of oiled wildlife preparedness and response. In every aspect of Sea Alarm’s work, our focus is on ensuring that all stakeholders’ interests and concerns are taken into account in any decision-making process. Experience has shown that wildlife response, whatever the emergency, is contingent on awareness and preparedness at every level.
- Advocacy is needed to increase awareness of the complexity of wildlife emergency response and the need to develop appropriate preparedness.
- Coordination of multi-stakeholder activities is needed to develop the cohesion and cooperation needed for an effective response.
- A well thought out and exercised wildlife response plan, in contrast to ad hoc and improvised responses, increases positive animal welfare.
- Capacity building ensures a pool of knowledgeable, experienced and aligned responders will be available during an incident; and regional and national preparedness frameworks are place.
- Training and exercises allow all actors to maintain their skills between incidents, get to know each other, and improve response methods.
Whenever a spill occurs the Sea Alarm team stands ready to assist in ensuring a smooth wildlife response by providing expertise at various levels.
Learn more about the scope of our work below, and read the case studies to the right to see examples of our projects.
Geographic scope
Since 1999, Sea Alarm has worked with a wide range of different governmental, industry and NGO stakeholders in many countries around the world. We encourage you to click on the link below to explore our interactive maps and learn more about each of these projects.
Advocacy
Sea Alarm’s advocacy has led to many positive changes at the national and international level. In Europe, it has encouraged and inspired international processes which are increasing stakeholder awareness of the need to prepare for oiled wildlife incidents.
More and more countries and regions are integrating response to oiled wildlife into their contingency plans. Sea Alarm also regularly attends oil spill meetings and conferences, reinforcing the importance of planning and training for wildlife response within overall spill response activities.
Facilitating multi-stakeholder activities
Effective response to oil affected wildlife requires coordinated interactions between a variety of wildlife rescue and conservation NGOs, industry and governments, and each of these stakeholders has specific concerns and goals.
For years, Sea Alarm has been working closely with many such groups in many countries and understands the particular needs and requirements under which they operate. Sea Alarm can operate as a neutral, impartial facilitator between these groups, and is often able lead them into positive, constructive discussions to develop a consensus on critical issues regarding the planning of (oiled) wildlife emergency response.
Wildlife response plan development
By assisting in the development of response plans, Sea Alarm helps governments, industry and NGOs to be better prepared to respond to oiled wildlife incidents.
Sea Alarm provides training and helps initiate and assist with round table discussions on response plan development. Over time, the team has developed skills, insight and experience that can be applied on a global scale to enhance wildlife response planning.
Capacity building
In an emergency response, the single most important determining factor for a successful outcome is cooperation. Key response specialists should not waste their time or energy on lengthy discussions or perform in mistrust of one another. By working on the same page, their efforts are bound to be successful, even under the most difficult of circumstances.
Sea Alarm’s philosophy therefore is to connect people long before they may have to work together as part of a wildlife response. Instrumental in this approach is the organisation of conferences, round tables, workshops and training events. One of Sea Alarm’s capabilities as an independent facilitator is creating an open and cooperative atmosphere in which possible problems are identified and addressed before they may compromise a response.
Training and exercises
Sea Alarm invests a lot of time and energy in creating training opportunities for different target groups within the community of marine wildlife emergency responders.
Target groups include emergency response managers, wildlife response managers, hands-on responders and scientists. Sea Alarm also organizes training events and contributes to exercises that enable groups of responders to gain knowledge and cooperate together.
Wildlife response
When a spill involving wildlife occurs, Sea Alarm is prepared to assist with a response at various levels, from providing advice and support remotely to aiding with on the ground assessment, mobilisation of specialist equipment and personnel.
Sea Alarm provides assistance and advice during responses to oiled wildlife incidents. It assists local and international response teams to optimize their efforts and help ensure an effective response. Sea Alarm has also assisted in many European incidents by providing advice to local responders and/or mobilizing and coordinating response assistance.
In the last 15 years, Sea Alarm has provided assistance during numerous oiled wildlife incidents, including the Jessica (Galapagos, 2001), Prestige (Spain, 2002), Tricolor (Belgium, 2003), Mystery spill (Estonia, 2006), MS Server (Norway, 2007), Volganeft 139 (Russia 2007) Mystery spill, (Germany 2008), Full City (Norway, 2009,) Godafoss (Norway, 2011), Mercury Harbour (Netherlands, 2011), MS Oliva (Tristan da Cunha, 2011), Bonga (Nigeria, 2011), MS Flinterstar (Belgium, 2015), and Bow Jubail (Netherlands, 2018) spills.