From an early age, Raquel Gaspar knew her life would inevitably lead her to the sea. She dreamed of becoming a marine biologist so she could study dolphins. “It was my dream,” she tells us, eyes drifting toward the water. “I spent 20 years of my life here in the Sado estuary, following the resident population of bottlenose dolphins. As a researcher, I wanted to understand how we could save this tiny group, which was ageing and in decline,” she recalls.

The answer wasn’t far away and it proved transformative. First for Raquel, and now for everyone, thanks to Ocean Alive, the organisation she founded in 2015 to protect the ecosystem she knows so intimately. “I realised that to save the dolphins, I had to save the seagrass meadows. Their food, their survival, their reproduction, it all depends on this habitat,” she explains, describing how these underwater forests, vibrant with life, are themselves threatened and at risk of disappearing.

Seagrass meadows are, as Raquel puts it, “forests in the sea.” Made up of submerged plants that, just like trees on land, offer shelter, food and breeding grounds to countless species. It’s where cuttlefish lay their eggs, where seahorses cling to swaying leaves, where eels hide, where sea bass and bream grow, and where crabs forage. “All of this happens in the meadows, it’s like a ballet,” she says, with a touch of poetry. “The meadows dance with the tides and currents. They produce oxygen and, when the tide is still, the water sparkles… It feels like being inside a bottle of champagne.”

In the past decade, much work has been done both underwater and on land. Raquel doesn’t believe in dividing the two: she sees the system as a whole, and herself as part of it. That’s how she found her way into the fishing communities and never left. For two main reasons: the knowledge they hold, and the habits that need to shift. “Until recently, one of the biggest problems was simply a lack of awareness. Very few people knew what this habitat was, or why it mattered,” she says. “The Sado estuary is Portugal’s second-largest area of seagrass meadows,” she notes, adding that “the direct threats come from human activities”, boat traffic and anchoring, dredging that clouds the water and starves the plants of light, destructive fishing techniques and the litter left behind.

Today, the signs of change are visible. “Tons of rubbish have been removed by thousands of volunteers,” she says proudly. And perhaps even more importantly, habits are changing. Among the Sea Guardians, women fishers and shellfish gatherers who help protect and monitor the meadows, a new awareness has taken root, spreading throughout the community. GPS in hand, they map the recovery and witness the return of the meadows. “One of the biggest secrets of our project is really the Sea Guardians,” Raquel says. “It’s a project with a strong environmental and human side. Through these women, we’re able to reach, for example, decision-makers.”

Their example has already inspired other fishing communities: women in the Ria de Aveiro and on Culatra Island have started to organise as well, and even in Galicia there are shellfish gatherers eager to follow the Portuguese model.

But there is still much to do, starting with valuing the species that thrive in these waters yet rarely make it onto a plate: rock goby, meagre, salema, wrasse. “These fish are worth almost nothing at first sale. A fisherman goes to auction and earns next to nothing for what he brings in,” Raquel says, calling on chefs and cooks to take action.

Above the waterline, the challenge is different. “Ocean Alive’s Achilles’ heel is being small while having big ambitions for impact,” she admits. The organisation needs more human and technical resources from legal support to accounting and communications as well as funding to stabilise the team and continue the vital work of regeneration.

Ocean Alive
Cooperativa Para a Educação Criativa Marinha, Setúbal

+351 917 915 595
www.ocean-alive.org
info@ocean-alive.org

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