Making Waves in The World of Ocean Conservation
Summer Crosley is an international model and actress, best known for her role in the hit TV show Californication. When she is not traveling the globe, she is devoting her time to making a difference in the world by supporting environmentally friendly causes such as Ocean life Conservation.
This initiative is designed to protect our beautiful oceans and to help keep our beaches clean. Summer has influenced the public to join this eco-friendly movement by doing our bit to help decrease pollution and protect wildlife. She continues to dedicate her daily life to encourage others to clean up our beaches and reminding others to reduce, reuse, recycle to conserve our beautiful oceans and coastlines.
Most people fail to realise the importance of ocean conservation to protect our planet. Summer reminds her peers and the wider community that littering puts our beautiful wildlife — dolphins, whales, sea turtles, tropical fish at risk of endangerment and extinction. She has travelled to the world’s top beach destinations to raise awareness, including Fiji, Bali, Africa, Mexico, Brazil, and Costa Rica. Through her work with Oceana, Summer continues on her mission to influence thousands to join the eco-friendly movement and help protect our beautiful ocean life from extinction.
Oceana is the largest non-profit organisation dedicated to protecting and restoring the world’s oceans. The organisation has been supported by several other big names including Leonardo Di Caprio who has been a major contributor to marine conservation
1.What first made you want to start helping to protect our ocean life and keep our beaches clean? My journey to start protecting our world’s oceans started with a trip to Indonesia 10 years ago. During my time there I realized our oceans coral, reef, and fish were in danger, and that most of the world was dumping their trash into the ocean. So, I started collecting sea urchin shells from Bali, and made over 1000 candles out of the shells and all the proceeds from the candles I donated to several non-profit ocean conservation groups.
2.Apart from no-littering, what’s one thing you would encourage us to do differently to benefit our environment? There are so many little everyday things we can all do that would make a big impact. For example, stop buying water in a plastic bottle. It’s bad on the environmen and the chemicals in the plastic are bad for our health. Also, bring your own bag to the supermarket. Stop accepting plastic bags. Thankfully many cities have stopped plastic bags. If you are on the beach and see an empty plastic bottle in the sand, please pick it up and throw it away before it ends up in the ocean.
3.What are your next ocean conservation goals? I am currently working on a project that focuses on putting a stop to fashion that is bad for our oceans, as sadly a great deal of our worlds textile waste and toxic chemicals end up in our oceans causing a great deal of pollution. Also, for the past several years I have been an ambassador for Oceana, which is a large non-profit conservation group based out of California, I am always looking for ways to be involved in projects to make our beautiful world more sustainable.
4.How do you think we can encourage the younger generation to continue looking after the oceans and beaches? I really think this should be taught early on in school. When I was growing up, the teachers never taught children about environmentalist actions they can take. But thankfully now, there has been a lot of press and concerns worldwide and I think that teachers are now starting to inform their students of what they can do to help. I think it is great if kids can join a non-profit in their community to help out with ocean conservation or anything to help Mother Nature.
5.If you could choose only 3 luxuries to take with you to a beach island for a week, what would they be? Sunscreen because I must take care of my skin, a great pair of fun sunglasses, and a cool swim cover up.
6.As a frequent visitor to Marbella, what do you love most about it here? I love the beaches, the food and the people...Marbella is a gem and full of so many places to explore.
7.You have appeared in hundreds of magazines and hit TV shows, what projects are you currently engaged in? I still model quite a bit and it takes me to a lot of amazing places that let me utilize my ocean conservation efforts. I just returned from the magical island of Saint Lucia, and wow was it gorgeous. I helped out for a day at a local farm and got to learn how the locals source their food.
8.We love that you are creating an eco-friendly movement, tell us more about that and how others can get involved… I would love to see more people getting involved in their local communities to find a volunteer group that focuses on ocean conservation efforts. Whether you are in Marbella, California, Bali, South Africa, or wherever, there are so many groups out there that would love to have more people on board.