Dear Friend,

Thanks to your support, Ocean Champions was able to achieve some important victories in 2010:

• Helping 22 of our 26 endorsed champions win their general elections, keeping the oceans’ strongest supporters in Washington, D.C.

• Working with these champions to fight offshore drilling and to pass bills that preserve coastal habitat, research ocean acidification and protect sharks.

• Working with the Administration to help obtain our nation’s first conservation-driven National Ocean Policy.

We couldn’t close two others, but our friends inside say they are positioned well in 2011:

• Our champions passed a House bill to reduce toxic algae and dead zones, and fought to the end to pass it in the Senate. This bill retains strong bipartisan support for 2011.

• We built strong support for funding critical ocean projects, including fisheries reform. We’re fighting to keep this in the budget when it is reconsidered in March.

We’re proud of this progress, but it isn’t enough. If we – Ocean Champions and you – are going to save the oceans, we’ve got to do more and do it faster. But, you ask, won’t ocean conservation be even tougher in the 112th Congress?

Yes it will, but great movements often become great when they’re backed into a corner. This is our time. 2010 strategies won’t work in 2011, so we’ve pushed ourselves to innovate - to find the path to victories in the 112th Congress and beyond.

And we’re excited by what we found. We’ll be fighting to save fish, to achieve major reductions in ocean pollution and to improve water quality – with a strategy crafted for today’s political reality.

Will you join us? Your support has driven our successes to date, and can bring more in 2011. Please contribute to Ocean Champions today. Together, we can win.

For the oceans,

David Wilmot, Ph.D. President and Co-Founder	Mike Dunmyer Executive Director