Free Range Ocean Receives the 2025 OCC Environment Award
- Larissa Clark
- 7 hours ago
- 3 min read
We are thrilled to announce that the Ocean Cruising Club has awarded its 2025 Environment Award to Duncan Copeland, Larissa Clark and family aboard S/V Freeranger in recognition of the creation of the Ocean Citizen Science Directory and the wider work of Free Range Ocean.
We were truly humbled to hear we'd been nominated for this award, and deeply honoured to have been selected and for the recognition from a community we respect enormously.
The OCC has long championed seamanship, curiosity and responsible voyaging. To be acknowledged for environmental leadership within that circle means a great deal — particularly because sailors are uniquely placed to witness the health of our ocean first-hand.
Since launching Free Range Ocean in 2023, we have turned our 50-foot sailboat, Freeranger, into a mobile platform for marine conservation. Drawing on more than forty years of combined experience in marine resource management, environmental campaigning and communications, we set out to better connect people on the water with the scientists working to understand it.
Our approach is simple: every observation counts.
Everyday people — including cruising sailors, coastal fishers, families exploring rockpools, divers, paddleboarders and beach walkers — can all contribute meaningfully to global marine knowledge. Because the ocean is vast, dynamic and still deeply under-observed. The clearer our collective picture, the better the decisions that follow — and given the sheer scale of the ocean, the effort to understand and protect it cannot be the responsibility of scientists alone. It requires many people, each doing something practical, wherever they are.
From the Pacific Northwest to French Polynesia and across the South Pacific to New Zealand, our own voyages have become opportunities to contribute data wherever we travel.
We’ve towed a neuston net across open-ocean swells for studies of life at the ocean’s surface thousands of miles from land, logged whale and dolphin sightings from coasts to high seas, recorded seabirds far offshore, and documented floating debris and fishing activity in remote waters. Small, practical contributions gathered steadily over time — adding up to something far bigger than a single boat.
At the heart of this award is the Ocean Citizen Science Directory — a curated, open-access platform designed to make it simple for anyone to find and participate in credible, ocean-benefiting projects wherever they are in the world.
While cruising sailors are uniquely positioned to collect data across vast distances, the Directory is equally relevant to someone surveying litter on their local beach, submitting wildlife sightings from a kayak, or contributing fisheries observations from a working vessel or holiday charter.
Beyond data collection, Free Range Ocean’s work spans both collaboration and demonstration. We host and connect local conservation initiatives, marine researchers and storytellers on board Freeranger in and from the countries we visit — creating space for shared learning and practical exchange. At the same time, we use the boat as a living testbed: trialling environmentally responsible cruising practices, showcasing lower-impact technologies, and exploring how everyday operational decisions can reduce a vessel’s footprint.
This award reflects a growing movement — within the cruising community and far beyond it — of people who care deeply about the waters they depend on and enjoy.
We believe sailing can be more than a way to cross oceans. It can be a way to protect them.
To the Ocean Cruising Club, thank you, deeply, for recognising that vision. And to anyone who spends time on, in or beside the sea: wherever you are, there is likely a way to contribute.
Let’s sail — and act — with purpose. 🌊
~ Larissa, Duncan, Eden and Skye Copeland - sv FREERANGER
