Cultivating Tomorrow’s Ocean Journalists

"Hope springs eternal." These three words from the poet Alexander Pope speak to the necessity of stubborn optimism. This phrase is also the motto of The Outlaw Ocean Institute.

With founding support from the 11th Hour Project and Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, the aim of the Institute is to improve the fate of the oceans and the people who work out there. 

Each year, we select several young journalists to train and support. We target talent in those countries -- typically outside the U.S. and E.U. -- that are most directly impacted by the human rights and environmental concerns that we cover. The Institute is also meant to scout promising reporters in the very places where our organization needs more language skills and local knowledge. 

Our 2022 Outlaw Ocean Institute fellows are Gaea Cabico, Min Kyi Thein and Mustapha Manneh.

Gaea is a print reporter from the Philippines who has done incredible work on environmental and human rights issues. The Philippines produces a quarter of the world’s seafarers, which makes our reporting distinctly relevant for this demographic of workers. 

The second 2022 fellow is Min, from Myanmar, who is a savvy and highly experienced video journalist. For years, he has worked in some of the most difficult settings. We will be working intensely with him on reporting to occur next year on the South China Sea. 

Our third fellow, Mustapha, is from the Gambia. He is a print reporter who has worked with The Outlaw Ocean Project in the past on an investigation tied to fishmeal that we produced for The New Yorker magazine. He will help us in further work we intend to do in 2023 along the coast of West Africa. 

We are immensely excited and honored to work with these three journalists.

Hope does spring eternal, but it also takes active cultivation, and that, journalistically, is our goal with the Institute.