(Second) largest shipment ever :: World Oceans Day

A few weeks ago we shipped our largest order ever (in boxes) to our friends from SeaWorld Abu Dhabi, and we’ll take this time to congratulate them on their opening last month.

This week we shipped another massive order, consisting of nearly 500 fish, again with a survival rate above 99%, specifically 99,6%.

But this shipment didn’t come without challenges, because the inbound flight from the Azores (Horta) was delayed and didn’t land in Lisbon until 15h15, while the flight to Dubai was scheduled to depart at 21h15. That may seem like a lot of time for a connection in a passenger’s flight but, trust us, it is not when handling cargo. Particularly if said cargo is going on a B777 that needs to load up to 100 cubic meters and is on the ground for less than two hours in between flights.

So, naturally, hearts were racing and sweat was breaking in everyone’s forehead, but amazing cooperation between multiple operators made everything possible. And just so you understand the complexity involved in an operation like this:

• Azores Airlines handles the flight from Horta to Lisbon
• Emirates Airlines handles the flight from Lisbon to Dubai
• Groundforce handles cargo on the import side in Lisbon
• Portway handles Emirates’ cargo on the export side in Lisbon
• Nippon Express handles our export paperwork in Lisbon
• GAC handles the import paperwork in Dubai

It’s a long list of individuals whose carefully orchestrated actions ensure that the animals we collect find their way to the exhibits catered by our clients, who then have the monumental job of using them as Ambassadors of the Oceans, which are severely threatened by Centuries of neglect from our species, particularly during the last few decades.

Overfishing, pollution, microplastics, climate change, it’s hard to pick a battle but we, along with our public aquaria clients, do our best to tackle them all, as illustrated in this chapter of the Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

We take a lot of hits in our business.

But we’d like to see those who point their fingers at us contributing with 100.000 euros towards in-situ research – or millions, like our clients do. We’d also like to see them do research and write papers on how the oceans work.

So this is our message on this year’s World Oceans Day:

There are many ways to help the Oceans, and this is how we do it.

And we are proud of it.

What will you do to help the Oceans today?

And tomorrow?