"Ocean lovers are often left out of the bigger environmental discussions and so struggle to see how they can do their part to stop climate change. But one organization, Sustainable Surf, is committed to changing all that by directly engaging the global surfing community to save and restore threatened mangrove forest ecosystems. Mangroves are five times more effective at sequestering carbon emissions than land-based trees. “Many people, including most ocean-minded individuals, inherently understand the real value of restoring coastal ecosystems as a way to protect our oceans, and ourselves. But they need an easier and more engaging pathway to get involved, and that’s why we’re launching project SeaTrees,” said Michael Stewart, co-founder of Sustainable Surf. The ocean-health innovation lab uses surf culture to sell a sustainable lifestyle to an audience all around the world. With SeaTrees, it will provide an online portal to surfers worldwide to calculate and offset their carbon footprint, then become ‘carbon positive’ by funding new mangrove trees. “The goal is to plant one million trees on behalf of the global surfing community in 2019,” said Stewart, who plans to ride the same wave that advertisers have used for years to sell products using surf culture, celebrities and events, but to promote conservation rather than consumption. “Every corporation in the world that you can think of … They all use the imagery of surf and surf culture and coastal ecosystems to sell their products,” he said..."