Approach
A deliberately transdisciplinary, co-creative approach, structured around three philosophical axes and around marine rewilding as a conservation strategy.
The foundations that structure us
Three cross-cutting philosophical axes guide every decision, ahead of any specific programme or project.
Consilience
The creative convergence of knowledge. We integrate scientific, humanistic, technical, political and cultural perspectives to make sense of complex phenomena.
It is not just another interdisciplinary exercise, but a co-creation strategy that takes on the function of epistemic mediation: listening between traditions, translation between fields and facilitation of dialogue.
The living ocean
We understand the ocean not as a resource to be managed, but as a living, interconnected system on which the planet's stability depends.
Its functions —regulating the climate, producing oxygen, sustaining the cycles of life— are inseparable from its cultural and symbolic dimension for millions of people.
Rights of nature and animal law
We recognise the emerging legal framework that grants marine ecosystems legal standing as subjects of rights, from the Mar Menor to the advisory opinion of the Inter-American Court (2025).
To this is added animal law: European legislation recognises animals as sentient beings (Art. 13 TFEU; Law 7/2023). We integrate ethical consideration of the cognitive and emotional capacity, and capacity for suffering, of marine animals —fish, cephalopods and decapod crustaceans.
Restoring complexity
Rewilding restores degraded ecosystems by reintroducing ecological processes and keystone species, so that nature recovers its capacity for self-regulation. We work to recover trophic complexity as a mechanism for restoring resilience.
We distinguish passive restoration —reducing the pressures that degrade ecosystems— from active restoration —reintroducing species, replanting seagrass meadows, reefs. The most effective strategies combine both.
The recovery of top predators and the protection of critical habitats generate trophic cascades with systemic effects: greater productivity, more carbon uptake and more climate resilience. Marine rewilding is the structuring axis of our strategy.
Changing the narratives
Communication is not a complement to conservation: it is its condition of possibility.
The conceptual frames through which we understand the world determine the policies we can imagine. A society that understands the ocean as a 'resource to exploit' will never generate protections comparable to those of a society that understands it as a 'living system of planetary reach'.
Language about the sea is not neutral: speaking of 'fish stocks' instead of 'marine populations', or 'marine resources' instead of 'living beings of the ocean', normalises exploitation and hampers empathy towards the marine environment.
SeaWilding adopts deliberately transformative rhetoric in all its communications, and recognises the need to counter the influence of industrial lobbies and 'manufacture of doubt' strategies regarding marine regulation.
Marine speciesism
Speciesism —the arbitrary discrimination against a being for belonging to another species— takes a particularly invisible form at sea. Marine animals, and fish in particular, are the most exploited vertebrates on the planet: between 1.1 and 2.2 trillion individuals caught each year[1].
The evidence —from research on fish intelligence to the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness[2]— establishes that their cognitive and emotional capacity does not essentially differ from that of other vertebrates. Sentience also extends to cephalopods and decapod crustaceans.
Regulatory capture
The disproportionate influence of industrial interests over regulation —industrial fishing, hydrocarbons, deep-sea mining— is a structural barrier to conservation. At COP30 (Belém, 2025), more than 1,600 lobbyists for fossil fuels were accredited: one in every twenty-five attendees[3].
To this is added the 'manufacture of doubt' —the same techniques used by the tobacco industry— to delay action: funding studies that question MPAs or opposing moratoriums. We recognise the need to document and counter these dynamics.
- 01Estimate of fish caught in extractive fishing, 2000–2019. fishcount.org.uk (A. Mood and P. Brooke).
- 02The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (2012). University of Cambridge.
- 03Global Witness / Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) Coalition (2025). Accreditation of the fossil fuel industry at COP30, Belém.