The group of friends who decided to save their own coastline
- IAmWaterFoundation
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
In Esmeraldas, on Ecuador's Pacific coast, there is a place most outsiders know for one reason: the waves. Mompiche is home to a break recognised as one of the longest in the world, and it draws surfers from across the planet. But if you paddle past it, the town opens onto something far larger than a surf spot - a stretch of coast where tropical rainforest, mangrove, estuary and ocean all meet in a single connected system.
This area is known as the Chocó, and it’s one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. The mangroves here form part of the Manglares Estuario Río Muisne Wildlife Refuge, which safeguards 3,173 hectares of mangrove forest and is home to all six of Ecuador's mangrove species. It is also a haven for 253 different species, among them 25 mammals and 70 birds. Howler monkeys and sloths move through the canopy, sea turtles nest on the sand, and along the mangrove roots, fishers and the women who gather shellfish work the same waters their families have for generations.
It is easy to see the beauty. It is easier to miss how little support exists to protect it. Esmeraldas is a province of immense natural wealth but with real social and economic challenges, where conservation often depends on nothing more than local people deciding, themselves, to care. For years, the job of protecting it fell to almost no one in particular. Then a few friends in Mompiche decided that "no one in particular" would be them. That is exactly where Verde Marino began.
From concern to action
Verde Marino started when a group of friends decided to stop asking who was going to solve the problem of the waste around them - and to start doing something about it themselves. It was founded by Joshelyn Pasquel, out of a simple conviction: that to act is the beginning of all transformation. Along the way, others who shared that commitment joined, and what began as concern became a community.
Today, Verde Marino is a community-led environmental education organisation. Grassroots and volunteer-run, its work is rooted in a belief that runs deeper than any single cleanup: that people protect what they know and love, and that the way to protect an ocean is to bring people into a real relationship with it.
Through hands-on experiences like beach cleanups, creative workshops, community eco-cinema screenings, reforestation, and hours spent in the water itself - they work to strengthen their community’s environmental awareness and deepen their sense of belonging to the land and sea around them. Everything they run is free, open and participatory, in a place where that kind of access can't be taken for granted.
The change this creates is not abstract. The staff at Verde Marino told us a story of one young boy who came to one of their first beach cleanups and found it, at first, simply a tiring chore. As the group talked about where waste comes from, how far it travels, how much of it is eaten by marine life and how long it lingers before breaking down, something changed, and he began asking questions. The way he looked at the beach and the ocean changed. Today he is one of the most committed young participants in their activities - and he has brought his own friends along with him.
As Verde Marino puts it, when one person transforms their relationship with their environment, that transformation begins to influence everyone else around them. It's a small idea with a long reach - and it's the same idea behind the OCEAN FOR ALL Alliance.
Verde Marino x OCEAN FOR ALL Alliance
The OCEAN FOR ALL Alliance (OFAA) is an I AM WATER Foundation initiative, proudly funded by the Oceans Finance Company. OFAA exists to build relationships across borders - connecting the people and organisations working to bring their communities closer to the ocean, and amplifying voices that mainstream conservation too often overlooks. It is a growing network held together by a shared conviction: that access to the ocean, and to the knowledge and belonging that come with it, should be for everyone.
Verde Marino is exactly the kind of organisation that vision was built around - a community protecting its own coast from the inside out, in a place far from the centres of conservation funding and attention.
In April 2026, Verde Marino joined 11 other organisations from Ecuador as part of the OCEAN FOR ALL Alliance training cohort, coming together to learn the Ocean Connection methodology that I AM WATER Foundation has been running since 2010 in Cape Town. For a team already doing this work by instinct and conviction, it was a way to deepen their practice and share it with others walking the same path.
When we asked Verde Marino facilitator, Mariana Pasarisa, what being part of the alliance has changed for her, she said,
“Being part of OFAA has been a confirmation that the path we’ve chosen as a team makes sense. We are now more connected to other inspiring, generous and committed people - people with whom we share a common purpose, and a conviction that collective work can bring about real change. The alliance has strengthened our motivation to keep building community and caring for the territories we love.”
Follow the work
Verde Marino's next chapter is an eco-school for Mompiche - an ongoing, structured home for the environmental education they have been building activity by activity, so that the learning can continue and grow.
You can follow their work on Instagram at @verdemarinomompiche or visit them online here. We are proud to have them in the OCEAN FOR ALL Alliance.
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