For Immediate Release:
May 30, 2006
Contact:
Ana Mileva
415/321-1741
amileva@motherjones.com

Mother Jones Launches Ocean Voyager

As a lead-up to World Oceans Day, celebrated on June 8, Mother Jones magazine today launched "Ocean Voyager," an innovative web-based adventure that takes viewers on a virtual voyage to ocean trouble spots around the globe. The interactive journey highlights solutions and offers actions that individuals can take to help preserve and protect the ocean.

Signing up for Ocean Voyager initiates a series of five weekly email episodes. Each email takes users to a different ocean hot spot. Episodes include a visit to the west coast of Africa, where fish pirates are fishing illegally inside Guinea’s territorial limits, and a journey to the Arctic Ocean, where accumulating toxins and global warming threaten the existence of polar bears.

Ocean Voyager includes videos, audio interviews with key players, web cams, and links to informative web pages created by more than twenty organizations. The project is designed to be current throughout the year; links to the voyage can be passed from user to user.

Here’s a quick summary of the five chapters:

Chapter 1: West Coast of Africa. Fish pirates and overfishing; what the public can do to help.

Chapter 2: The Gulf of Mexico dead zone and how Midwest farmers can help shrink it.

Chapter 3: The Pacific Northwest. Toxins in fish and other sea creatures—how to protect them, and yourself.

Chapter 4: The Arctic – polar bears, global warming, and you.

Chapter 5: Brings you back to Washington, D.C., alerting readers to emerging political issues such as the reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which governs how many fish can be taken in U.S. territorial waters each year.

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Now in its 30th year of publication, San Francisco-based Mother Jones magazine is an independent investigative magazine with four National Magazine Awards to its credit, including the 2001 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. Mother Jones’ special March 2006 issue on the ocean, plus extensive online-only content, can be found at http://www.motherjones.com/ocean.