Bio Mary Crowley

Mary Crowley is the Founder and Executive Director of Ocean Voyages Institute (OVI) which was established in 1979 as a public charity based in Sausalito, California. Their goal is to preserve the maritime arts and sciences, the ocean environment and island cultures. She is also a co-founder of the Mission Resolve Foundation. Mary also founded and is the CEO of Ocean Voyages, Inc, an international yacht chartering company which offers trips on sailing vessels and luxury yachts worldwide to expose people to our ocean world.

Ms. Crowley previously served as Executive Director of the Oceanic Society, publisher of Oceans magazine and on the board of Directors of Project Jonah, the Maritime Museum of San Diego, Sail San Francisco and many other organizations. Her current board positions include Ocean Voyages Institute, WELL Network as well as the Richardson Bay Maritime Association. She is a founding member of Planetree, which enhances healing environments in hospitals and healthcare education.

Mary’s efforts since 2009 at Ocean Voyages Institute have focused on ocean cleanup of consumer plastics and derelict fishing gear, which entraps sea life, kills reefs and destroys marine habitats. Mary personally led two month-long expeditions on board the 151′ Brigantine Kaisei to the North Pacific Gyre, studying debris distribution and conducting cleanup of plastics.

With the assistance of worldwide efforts, people have come together to assist making the goal of cleaning up our global ocean a reality. Clearly, additional plastic debris in our ocean occurs from disasters such as tsunamis, typhoons, floods and loss of containers from ships. Ocean Voyages Institute has participated in multi-disciplinary projects involving tagging of ghost nets and removal of over 400 tons of toxic plastic debris from our ocean. Ocean Voyages Institute is scaling up its removal projects by adding additional ships to increase removal of toxic plastics from our ocean and tackle this escalating problem.

As an educated and ardent environmentalist, Mary has found time to enjoy exploring the world via yacht, logging over 125,000 nautical miles. She was a teacher and program director for the Oceanic School of New York on board the 345′ Barque Statsraad Lehmkuhl for nine months, (a school year). She was also on the first voyage of S.E.A. of Woods Hole on board the Brigantine Westward as staff. She has sailed in the Galapagos archipelago 23 times, as well as repeat visits to most of the world’s ocean areas.

It is Mary’s lifelong passion for sailing, snorkelling, diving and exploring the world’s oceans that has fueled her continuing commitment and dedication to ocean conservation and the marine environment. She feels we all need to take action to improve the health of our oceans. Ocean cleanup and restoration of our ocean environment are vital to the health of our ocean and our own health.