Many of you will have heard of Ocean Ramsey and many more will likely have no idea who she is but that is something that needs to change.

This remarkable ocean conservationist is taking on the world in her attempt to save the sharks - and the oceans in general.

Let’s start with the why? Sharks are absolutely vital for the health of our oceans and therefore, the well-being of every single human on the planet. Think of all ocean creatures as a chain - remove one link and it is no longer a chain and the entire system crashes. Sharks are one of the most important creatures in the ocean as they are the cleaners - they dispose of dead creatures, eliminate the weak creatures and don’t over-predate on any one particular food source.

Yet humans kill between 100 million and 273 million per year - 73 million of these are slaughtered to feed the trade in shark fin soup - a horrible dish that is only palatable with additional sauces and eaten as a status symbol. The death of 73 million sharks to help the Chinese feel better about themselves!

As the total equates to 274,000 dead sharks per day, any fool can see this is totally unsustainable and sharks will disappear from our planet in the not too distant future. Remove sharks and what they prey on will over populate and devastate what they feed on and so on down then line until we have dead oceans which, in turn, will affect every human on the planet until we are all gone.

We need people like Ocean (and yes, that is really her name) to draw attention to this horror. She spends her entire life doing just that.

I have been diving for over forty years as a Master Instructor and have a very special interest in sharks, having been ‘asked’ to leave the country for taking action against their slaughter by disabling some of their fishing boats propellors in the dead of night - especially the five that were catching huge amounts of juvenile Hammerheads and destroying the future population.

In 1992, l saw over 1,000 giant scalloped Hammerheads daily cruising around an underwater sea mound in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. A report last year from a friend who did twelves dives over five days - he saw NONE! They catch them, mince them up so as to be anonymous and you eat them in your tacos.

I have dived with most species and had a few Black Tips and Oceanic White Tips in the Red Sea only this year but 90% less than l saw 20 years ago.

I have dived with most species and know only too well that the two you try to avoid in open water are Great Whites and Tiger Sharks. Both are dangerous and slightly psychotic and are very difficult to trust.

Ocean has a highly unique affinity with sharks and can do things never seen before. She dives with Great Whites and Tiger Sharks up to six times a day with no scuba gear, she strokes them when there are several other huge specimen in the water and has never, I repeat, never been attacked. This is unique. We know that sharks sense humans through their electroreceptors - they sense fear and panic, which excites them and can lead to attack. Ocean is so calm that sharks accept her in their space and have no urge to attack. With Great Whites, this has never been seen before.

Ocean was born in 1987, is based in Hawaii and started life as a model.  She operates One Ocean Diving LLC and was the subject of the 2025 Netflix documentary, The Shark Whisperer - a remarkable programme that documented her life and her non-stop efforts to save the sharks.

Her first success in stopping the slaughter was the passing of the Hawaii House Bill 553, that was passed into law in 2021, making Hawaii the first state to ban all killing of sharks - a major achievement that she wants to replicate around the globe.

I asked her why she has devoted her life to this worthy endeavour: “My true goal is to educate and inspire enough people to join in the efforts to start taking action for sharks and marine life. The greatest threat to the conservation of our natural planet and wildlife is the belief that someone else will save it. This is a community effort, and the change we truly need to make can be better made with your help. I  hope you will be inspired to take action too.” 

Ocean often suffers from critics of her work with many saying she is glamourising the touching of sharks; that she is increasing the stress felt by the sharks; that she is disrupting their feeding habits and migratory patterns; that by touching them she is removing their mucus film, making them vulnerable to disease and so on. The best one was that she is doing this for personal celebrity.

Most of this is professional jealousy and she has done more to raise awareness of sharks in a year than most conservationists do in a decade. Whatever has gone before has not worked, as the rate of slaughter has not slowed so if what she is doing is raising awareness, then leave her be to get on with it.

If more conservationists constantly thought of better schemes to protect sharks rather than spending years in labs compiling data, we would be in a far better position. The individual reputation of the scientists and conservationists is not important - the only thing that matters is whether their research is working to decrease the murder rate and the answer is no. So join her, applaud her and encourage her as what she is doing is really making a difference.

I asked Ocean where it all started and why she does what she does: “Growing up, I was a pretty quiet kid who loved to play outside and care for all my pets. My parents were wonderful and also appreciated all species and loved being in nature, so we had every pet allowable. We even had bunnies and goats who would run through the house or flop up on the couch with us.

“I grew up that way from the time I could remember. Whether it was nature, nurture, or a combination of both, I was very attuned to the communicative behaviours and subtleties of other species, both domestic and wildlife, that I would observe and interact with around my home.

“Our home was full of pets and also a lot of SCUBA gear, relics, and natural “tokens from the sea” that my parents had collected over their lifetime.  One of my first memories was of my fathers dive fins.  They were stored in the hallway, they were all black (the old original US Navy kind) but he had marked his by spray painting a florescent orange dolphin and whale in a circular arching formation.  

“That “logo” burned into my memory and was the first depiction of a dolphin and whale I had knowingly seen, this is the earliest clear memory of my life, so to no surprise when it came time to design the logo for OneOcean I recreated it from memory and added the shark at the centre (to represent my generation and kuleana.) 

“My grandfather was a sailor and became a submarine captain and told me old stories from Tahiti, and how his work as a submarine commander meant he got to explore the ocean all the way up under the polar ice caps where he saw “black and white whales” (Orca.)  He and my grandmother met in Honolulu when my great grandmother had insisted that her daughter (my grandmother) attend a luncheon in downtown Waikiki.  He eventually proposed to her at the old pink Royal Hawaiian Hotel and they got married at Pearl Harbour.

“My great grandmother swam off the south shore of O’ahu every day until the day she died and my family has an even longer history of their shared love of the ocean and wildlife, and we all seem to have “spirit animals,” a species that we each seem to connect with and be drawn to more than others. 

“I still remember my first time seeing underwater in the ocean. It was a green, murky day without much visibility. I had a mask on, but no snorkel—I didn’t use snorkels until I was older. Having only opened my eyes underwater before to a natural blur, having more clarity but nothing to see besides many green particles of seaweed and sand swirling near shore, was actually initially disorienting, but then a small school of fish with cute eyes and a little green stripe on their sides swam by and I forgot about the need to breathe and I was no longer disoriented. Instantly, everything felt so natural. I was so excited, joyful, and just wanted to follow them.

“As I followed them into slightly deeper water the near shore turbidity calmed and I could suddenly see the deeper reef and many other more brightly coloured fish. I wanted to see those fish up close so I took a deep breath and dove down. The rest is history and my fascination with watching and interacting with marine life just naturally flowed from there.

“The first shark I saw was very close to shore, it was a calm clear crisp morning and the water was very clear.  I was floating in maybe less than 10ft of water and this beautiful elegant shape glided along the bottom beneath me. It felt like time stood still as it was directly beneath me. I was mesmerised and intrigued.

“I remember hearing the calm sound of the waves on the shore nearby and thinking to myself that I wasn’t sure what to do as it passed me, simply continuing on its way, I thought to myself should I follow it? I indulged my curious nature and slowly and quietly followed it from a distance for a little while just watching and appreciating the gracefulness of its movement, its hydrodynamic shape, and its unique presence.

“I am so grateful to my younger curious and courageous self for exploring and wanting to learn more. Had I not been taught by my mother to be respectfully sensitive to other species and nature, and had I been previously brain washed into believing sharks are monsters maybe my reaction would have been different.  

“Being a shy and quiet kid in general meant that I listened in and self-reflected on my observations of people—their behaviour, conversations, and body language toward one another. I did the same thing with my pets and the wildlife around me. I found that I could “communicate” with my pets and some wildlife—just not in the way that you and I would communicate (the way you “communicate with your cat, dog, bird, horse, etc.). If you have pets and are sensitive to them you probably know what I mean. It was through body positioning, eye contact or lack thereof, sometimes sounds, sometimes physical contact, and or simply my presence and energy or lack thereof.

“I watched how they watched me, how they learned they could respond to something I did, and vice versa.  Fish can be very reactive to movements, and they can also become attuned to your presence and become comfortable enough to go about their day with enough of a calm and patient presence. 

“I think growing up with horses helped. They are large, powerful animals who can bite, kick, trample and step on you. They are generally quiet but show subtle body movements (which become very overt to the trained eye, like shark body language) to express themselves and establish or maintain a social hierarchy. Being with horses helped me tremendously. Having to redirect their swinging heads or leverage off of their shoulders to maintain space and avoid my toes getting stepped on or kicked or trampled certainly helped me in developing my shark redirection technique.

“Combined with growing up and going to Tahiti, where we would hand-feed stingrays and gracefully move so that their powerful approaches actually helped us to flow together (while also staying aware of other rays and circling sharks to make sure not to get bit) helped me to develop my water skills as well.

“Stingrays can be surprisingly pushy, and also sweet if they want to be and they can react and adapt to one individual to the next. They share the electroreceptive sensory system sharks have, the ampullae of Lorenzini.  Like horses, I’ve noticed how much sharks and rays also seem to be highly sensitive to my hearbeat, breathing, and tensed or relaxed muscles.  

“There has never been a doubt in my mind about the individual consciousness of each animal I have met, or their ability to feel and react. The longer I spend with an individual of any species the more I become aware of their “personality” disposition or temperament in comparison to others. There has also never been a doubt in my mind that nature has a balance. I can see the interconnectivity, and science backs that up.

“So when it came to sharks, getting to see them up close while diving and even hand-feeding them when I was younger, and watching their social hierarchy and behaviours up close when they were excited, and eventually interacting with ones the size of horses (or larger), the interactions felt natural. I kept the same calm yet heightened awareness that I would with an excited horse, person, or other species, and that helped.

“Funny enough, I think some of the things I say to do (or not to do) to avoid enticing a shark would also probably be good advice to follow around an agitated human, lol. Humans are, after all, far more emotional, unreasonable, and dangerous than sharks.

“So there has never been a doubt in my mind that sharks are important for nature’s balance.

“Learning about shark finning (for shark fin soup) when I was a little older, I was actually in disbelief. I thought it was some kind of made-up bad joke. How could something so ridiculous exist? How illogical! And why would anyone keep such a practice up? It seems pretty stupid, dangerous, expensive, and wasteful, not to mention full of toxins passed into the consumer. 

“Sharks are in a way sort of like the “unicorns” of the ocean - you really don’t see too many outside of identified aggregation sites. Like a tiger in a jungle or a bear in a forest, you have to know where to go to have a higher chance of spotting them. They are apex predators so they are naturally slow to reproduce; their populations just cannot keep up with that kind of fishing pressure.

“Over 70,000,000 sharks are killed most, in the barbaric, cruel finning process, where their fins are sliced off while they are still alive, pulled out onto a fishing vessel deck where they suffocate and slowly bleed to death.

“All this led me to finding my voice to speak up for sharks. They really pulled me out of my natural tendency to be introverted. I certainly talk a LOT more now. I forced myself to be more social in general growing up, thinking that’s what I was supposed to do. I pushed myself out of my natural introvert tendencies enough that I know I can easily hold a conversation with anyone of any background in any situation and give valuable and impactful presentations very comfortably to huge diverse audiences of people.  

“However at times, I still find socialising personally exhausting to my core nature, especially if the conversation is about drama of some kind (I think I might be allergic to such conversations) So I have found that I am better off if I make time periodically to recharge by listening to nature, watching sharks in relative silence, and listening only to other non-human animals make noise.  If I swim, snorkel, or dive and listen to the fish on the reef, the dolphins, or the whales, or even just the waves, at the beach or while I surf, then I feel rejuvenated.  Spending time in silence on a hike, or with my horse, pups, cats, or birds and listening to the wind as it moves through tree’s and terrain really helps me to re-centre and recharge.   

“Anytime I can be in the water with sharks I naturally recharge, they force me into the present moment commanding my full attention, my breathing takes up a different rhythm, and I am more alert yet calm and feel more connected, especially out in the infinite blue. Really, I’d be happy to never speak a day again in my life, but I speak up for sharks and wildlife because they cannot speak up for themselves against human cruelty. Unfortunately, I am human, at least I look like one, even if I feel more akin to a wild animal on the inside. So fortunately for sharks and marine life, I do have a voice and probably an overly-analytical brain, as well as a gift for teaching. Thus I have an ability to articulate the things I’ve seen, experienced, and learned.

“So when it comes to sharks, it’s like you can’t get me to shut up. I could easily “bulldoze” someone in a conversation with my fiery passion about the subject of sharks and marine conservation. I have to actually be mindful to stop and listen, which, really, I’ve always known is the best default, because I learned from a young age that you learn a lot more from listening and observing, and a good argument or conversation truly considers and tries to factor in the perspective and information and needs of the “other side.”

“So here I am, having personally witnessed sharks, a species I’ve now had a lifetime of incredible encounters with, yet I know they are being killed for such wasteful reasons as casual fishing, targeted sport fishing, finning, and even just for spite. Probably a lot of this is derived from fear stemming from ignorance or the blinding mis-portrayal of them in films like Jaws.

“I think by speaking up and doing what I do, I can inspire others to feel more comfortable taking up a cause, speaking up for those without a voice—speaking up for sharks. And working together, we can get them the protection that has already been afforded to dolphins, sea turtles, and whales in many areas of the world.

“For the majority of my life, the saying most people have said is “the only good shark is a dead shark.” At some point, I realised that no one I knew (and there were fewer than five people I had heard of) had said or written nice things about sharks, or was going to speak up for them. No one was going to teach others about the truth (which contrasts