As a 14-year-old surfer in Laguna Beach, my dad Greg MacGillivray was determined to make a professional grade film. His first surf movie A Cool Wave of Color was a hit. 

“Small wave surfing in glassy waves was the prettiest thing on the planet. That was conveyed through the film. Anyone who felt the same way I felt, loved it,” he said.

We launched the One World One Ocean campaign because we want you to be in love with the ocean too.

MacGillivray Freeman Films has been making IMAX films since the 1970s about wild places: ice caves in Greenland, coral reefs of the South Pacific, the Nile, Mt. Everest. We’ve produced six of the top ten grossing IMAX films of all time, three of them about the ocean, and two—The Living Sea and Dolphins—were nominated for Oscars. 

But my dad and mom, Barbara, are concerned by the change they’ve seen over the years snorkeling on the reef just down from their house. Fish are getting smaller, and fewer. Making films around the world, we’ve seen it everywhere we’ve gone: less sea life and more trash.

My son Charlie is almost two now. I wonder what the ocean will be like for his kids. That depends on what we do now.

The ocean provides us with food, livelihoods, recreation, and the oxygen we breathe. It is home to countless species. More than anything, we just love being in the ocean. But it’s being trashed. If people know what’s going on, they will protect it. But to do so, they must be inspired.

If people were able to immerse themselves in the underwater world and observe sea life up close, they would come away changed. Experiencing our IMAX films is the closest thing to doing that without getting wet, so we’ve focused our team of filmmakers and communicators on the ocean.

We’ve reached out to other groups to form unique partnerships, like the Arctic Home campaign we recently produced with World Wildlife Fund and Coca-Cola. We’re getting creative about letting the world know what’s at stake.

One World One Ocean is a campaign really. Your inspiration is our platform. The ocean is our candidate. Winning means restoring the ocean to a wild, healthy state.

It also means helping sea life to thrive, from the tropical reefs to the Arctic sea ice.

Our chief advisor, National Geographic explorer in residence and oceanographer Sylvia Earle, says what we do in the next ten years will set the ocean’s fate for the next 10,000 years.

 In other words, the stakes are huge, and there is no time to lose. We’ve gone all in to protect the greatest resource this planet has.

Join us.