Louie Porta

Wading deep into uncharted waters, Louis has delivered impacts across a wide swath of ocean conservation initiatives. Under his direction, Oceans North helped secure a historic investment of 800 million in Indigenous-led conservation projects, led opposition to a mining expansion that impacted the world’s largest population of narwhals, helped secure fisheries closure for the deep-sea ecosystems of the Eastern Canyons Marine Refuge, an area covering 43,976 kilometres off Nova Scotia, successfully advocated for Canada to oppose deep-sea mining in international waters ahead of comprehensive protections being in place, and led or co-led numerous research projects, whilst advocating for science and evidence-based fisheries policies, which in turn led to the DFO to close bait and commercial fisheries for herring and mackerel to protect the long-term health of the species.