Varsity Sailing: On the Sea for Change

Photo by Trewin Copplestone ’17

The Varsity Sailing team is helping to conserve our oceans by joining forces with Sailors for the Sea.

The Blue and Gold is looking greener than ever as we head out on the water this spring. For the first time, Choate’s Varsity Sailing program is teaming up with Sailors for the Sea, a marine conservation organization, to set the standard for clean sailing at the high-school level.

Since 2004, Sailors for the Sea has been offering resources to sailors to help protect the ocean and educating race organizers on how to run clean regattas.

This year, Choate will be the first high-school sailing team in the country to earn accreditation from the organization for an entire season. Sailors for the Sea hopes that Choate’s clean season will serve as a model for high school, college, and club teams nationwide.

Recently, Olivia van den Born ’17 caught up with David Rockefeller Jr. — Chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation, co-founder of Sailors for the Sea, and lifelong sailor — to learn about his motivation for starting the organization and his hopes for the future.

OVDB: How did you first get involved in ocean conservation?

DR: Although I was an environmentalist and was active with the national parks through the ’90s, I had not really connected the problems with the ocean and my experience on it until I got appointed to the Pew Ocean Commission in 2000. That was totally transformative. I said to myself, “Hmm, I haven’t heard that sailors are trying to protect the oceans.” So I did a little study and found a white space in the conservation field and in the field of ocean conservation in particular. I attempted to fill it.

OVDB: Since the ocean covers roughly 71% of our planet, why do you think relatively little attention is paid to ocean conservation?

DR: I think in a way it is a simple answer: you pay attention to what impacts you the most. If you can’t see it, and most of the problems of the ocean are not necessarily visible, then it doesn’t seem like a problem.

OVDB: Do you think students are more aware of the environment now than a generation ago?

DR: I believe so. Materialism continues to be the main driver in the U.S. economy and around the world, and it’s a problem because it is material that impacts the oceans in a negative way. On the other hand, I think more and more people have become interested in something called the “circular economy”: the idea that when you no longer need something, you recycle it for another good use. You don’t put it on a barge and dump it in the ocean. You don’t put it in a landfill. So I think those are shifts that cause me to be optimistic.

OVDB: My hope is to expand your Clean Regattas program to a broader youth base. Do you think the model is scalable in youth club and school sailing programs?

DR: I am absolutely certain that it is. You have young people who care both about winning races and keeping the environment clean and healthy. I can really see it starting from Choate and the teams that you interact with, then to the agencies that run the national regattas that you try to qualify for.

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