California Ocean Comminicators Alliance

NOAA National Marine Sanctuary Program and the State of California Resources Agency have recognized a need for a statewide public awareness campaign on ocean issues and have identified the California Ocean Communicators Alliance as the lead resource for helping design and launch the campaign. The goal of the campaign is to raise awareness of ocean issues throughout the State of California by targeting all Californians. The campaign will be launched during the California and the World Ocean 2006 Conference, September 17- 20, 2006. The California Ocean Communicators Alliance represents over 100 organizations and 200 communications professionals from ocean-related industries, research and education organizations, and agencies that work daily with ocean messages and communicate those messages to millions of Californians. The goal of the Ocean Communicators Alliance is to increase public ocean awareness in California by working together on message agreement, cooperation in communicating those messages, and projects geared towards raising public ocean awareness. The tools for bringing the alliance together are the California Ocean Communicators Newsletter and the California Ocean Communicators Workshops. This presentation will highlight the results of the workshops, including common messaging and developing the California Public Ocean Awareness Campaign.