Sea Alarm

Mission of the organisation

Established in 1999, Sea Alarm has its roots in Europe’s wildlife rehabilitation community. With the goal of creating a more professional and coordinated network of European oiled wildlife responders, Sea Alarm has made significant contributions to the development of oiled wildlife preparedness and response capabilities, and to building response capacity and cooperation across Europe. Today Sea Alarm is focused on expanding these activities throughout the world.

Working in close collaboration with NGOs, government authorities, and the oil and maritime industries, Sea Alarm initiates and facilitates strategic preparedness activities for oiled wildlife response: raising awareness of the importance of wildlife response planning and advocating for further integration into spill response activities, as well as enhancing the professionalism and cooperation in oiled wildlife response efforts.

Area of Expertise

Oiled wildlife emergencies

Wildlife response planning

Coordination of multi-stakeholders

Wildlife advocacy

Wildlife training and exercising

EUROWA Charter

Sea Alarm acts as Secretariat of the EUROWA Network, coordinating work under the Charter.

Involvement in European preparedness/EUROWA since 2009

Meet the team

Saskia Sessions-Puplett

Partner organisation

Sea Alarm/EUROWA Secretariat

Describe your job

I provide the Secretariat of the EUROWA network along with my trusty colleague Daniela! That means keeping us moving on our Work Programme, organising network meetings, developing and delivering training courses, and project managing the EUROWA-2 project. This is part of my overall role as a Senior Technical Adviser at Sea Alarm, advising authorities, oil industry and NGOs on being better prepared for oiled wildlife incidents.

How would you explain your job to a five-year-old?

Sometimes big accidents happen at sea and animals can get hurt. I help the people who try to make the animals better and I help the people who make sure that can happen.

What do you love most about your job?

That I believe in it – impacts to wildlife are one of the most visible signs of an oil spill damaging the marine environment, and yet it is a part of oil spill response that still needs much improvement. And also getting to work with dedicated wildlife responders who do an amazing job.

What are the trickiest situations you face as part of your job?

Being available to respond to oiled wildlife incidents anywhere in the world can be challenging, particularly in remote or difficult locations where the level of local preparedness is low.

What was your dream occupation as a child?

A tourist. True!

If you were a superhero, what would your secret power be, and why?

I am torn between being able to breathe under water and being able to fly. Can I have both?!

How can people get in touch with you?

secretariat@eurowa.eu
www.twitter.com/EUROWA_EU
www.eurowa.eu

Daniela Barreras-Biesot

Partner organisation

Sea Alarm/EUROWA Secretariat

Describe your job

Similar to my colleague Saskia, I’m a Senior Technical Advisor at Sea Alarm and I also provide the Secretariat function to the EUROWA Network. We support EUROWA Organisations but also Industry and Authorities to be better prepared if they face an incident with oiled wildlife involved.

How would you explain your job to a five-year-old?

I help to organise lots of different people so that if there is an accident at sea where oil (a really nasty and sticky thing) is released and covering animals they can be saved and cleaned from that oil as soon as possible. With organising things well animals will not die, they will be able to recover, without suffering, and can be released again into the wild when the oil has been cleaned from where they live.

What do you love most about your job?

That it’s unique! There aren’t many people in the world doing what we do and we are helping and ´teaching´ all kind of people about the best approach to be as prepared and efficient as possible to protect wildlife from undesired accidents.

What are the trickiest situations you face as part of your job?

I think the trickiest is that despite getting important messages on wildlife response and preparedness across to as many people as we can, sometimes decision makers also have to go through a long path of discussions/convincing and effective actions to protect wildlife and they might not be that evident in the short term, although I’m sure they will be on the medium/long term.

What was your dream occupation as a child?

Biologist working in the Ocean with dolphins and whales!

If you were a superhero, what would your secret power be, and why?

Changing people’s minds to make them see reality, or visions about what could happen if things went wrong. That way they would be able to work in advanced to avoid them (what we call preparedness!)

How can people get in touch with you?

secretariat@eurowa.eu