Storytelling is one of our oldest human behaviors. Across every culture and continent, people have used stories to share values, pass down knowledge and make sense of the world around them. The tales that survive, retold across generations, kept alive through memory and ceremony, aren’t arbitrary. These coastal legends carry essential wisdom.
For countless coastal communities, that wisdom is related to the ocean.
Here are five coastal stories that are important parts of different oral traditions and teach us about our ocean.
Scotland: Selkie Stories
Early written records from the coast of Scotland describe seal-people who shed their aquatic skins to walk among humans on land.
These are the selkie. Their stories follow a familiar arc. One is discovered on shore, their sealskin is stolen and they are bound to a human life. They marry, raise children, but remain melancholy, always watching the water. When the skin is finally found, they return to the sea without hesitation.
It’s not difficult to see where the concept took root. Gray and harbor seals have strikingly humanesque features like expressive eyes, complex vocalizations, mothers who nurse their pups. Early coastal communities observed those qualities, and the selkie story began to spread. It produced a cultural taboo against the excessive hunting of seals.
Today, the selkie is one of Scotland’s most recognized figures. Conservation organizations have adopted the selkie as a bridge symbol of cultural identity and ocean protection. Gray seal populations in Scottish waters continue to face pressure from abandoned fishing gear and historical culling practices, behaviors the selkie taboo was designed to prevent.
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Pasifika: Wayfinding
Pasifika is a collective term for the Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific Islands. For more than 3,000 years, they’ve managed to pass along extremely complex knowledge on how to navigate the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean.
Their secret weapon? Storytelling.
They shared stories of the demigod Māui and his canoe, Waka-a-Māui, then navigated by their corresponding constellations in the sky. Tāwhirimātea was the god of wind and storms. When his eyes appeared in the sky (as the Pleiades cluster), it meant that it was a good time to start a long voyage. Stories like these gave navigators a framework for planning their journeys and navigating the distances.
Wayfinding is a science. The people of Pasifika developed their knowledge system through thousands of years of empirical observation, experimentation at sea and rigorous knowledge transmission. The names and stories were a medium of storing and sharing this knowledge, and an effective one at that.
Mexico: Chalchiuhtlicue
Chalchiuhtlicue is the Aztec goddess of rivers, lakes, seas and the ocean, as well as the protector of fishermen and navigators. In Aztec cosmology, she was one of the most actively worshiped deities.
In different stories, she is portrayed as both a creator and destroyer, as surges of water can result in abundant harvests or devastating floods. Today, Mexico’s Pacific and Gulf coasts are among the world’s most biologically rich but storm-exposed marine environments.
Chalchiuhtlicue’s tradition reflects an understanding of how water has the potential to be life-giving or destructive depending on amount and location. Mexico’s Indigenous cultures understood water as the foundational substance of existence, from the ocean to the hydrological routes that fed agricultural soil.
Vietnam: Grandfather Whales
The coastal communities of Vietnam have long shared stories of whales as divine protectors, often referring to them as Cá Ông or “Grandfather Whales.”
It is believed that when fishing boats are lost in a storm, whales physically rescue the crew by sending them toward shore. Several fishing villages in Vietnam still celebrate the Whale Prayer Festival twice a year. Because the whales are so revered, fishermen report whale encounters. Whales received sacred funerals whenever they are beached.
These coastal villages demonstrate a relationship with whale species marked by reciprocity. Sperm whales, humpbacks and gray whales, in fact, show behaviors that are consistent with the stories about rescue. They may approach distressed swimmers, encircle capsized vessels or even support injured kin. When a whale dies, gratitude and grief are expressed. The practice of providing a proper Confucian funeral to beached whales reflects the way that a whale carcass can still sustain hundreds of species after death.
Caribbean: Mami Wata
Many cultures in the Caribbean have carried a belief in Mami Wata. She is an ocean deity, often depicted as a mermaid, who goes by several names: La Siréne in Haiti, River Mumma in Jamaica, and Yemonja in Brazil. Her reinterpretation across several cultures maps how her oral tradition was carried across the Atlantic by enslaved Africans and adapted in different Caribbean settings. Mami Wata is depicted as a beautiful woman, skilled at music, who can be both generous and dangerous. This dual nature is parallel to the Caribbean. It is one of the world’s most biodiverse marine environments, supporting coral reef ecosystems of extraordinary productivity, but it is also a region of violent tropical storms, dangerous currents and unpredictable weather.
Sightings of Mami Wata are thought by some scholars to be related to sightings of manatees. The large, slow marine mammals with humanlike eyes and nursing behavior may match the characterizations of the deity. When the belief in Mami Wata began to decline, so did manatee populations. This reflects a phenomenon researchers call the “sacred species” effect. When a creature holds deep spiritual significance in a culture, harming it carries social and moral consequences that can be more powerful than legal ones. This provides an element of protection that is sometimes more effective than law.
Long before satellites tracked ocean temperatures, people who lived alongside the water were paying close attention. They noticed which creatures signaled safe weather and which behaviors led to abundant catches. They encoded those observations into the stories they told—deities, creatures, warnings and rituals that traveled across centuries intact.
These aren’t relics. Many are living traditions, still practiced and still relevant. And when held up alongside what marine science has since confirmed, the parallels are striking.
The stories contain lessons
What connects a fisherman’s reverence for seals in Scotland to a Vietnamese community’s funeral rites for a beached whale? Around the world, people understand that the ocean is not only a resource for extraction but also offers a relationship to be maintained.
Ocean Conservancy operates on the same understanding. This drives our work today, from protecting marine ecosystems and rebuilding fish populations to fighting the pollution and policy decisions that put our ocean at risk. Right now, aging offshore oil and gas infrastructure is corroding on the seafloor, threatening many of the species that cultures around the world hold dear. The companies that build this infrastructure exploit loopholes to avoid cleaning it up. But we can change that. The proposed Offshore Leasing Standards and Accountability Act before Congress now would require oil and gas companies to take responsibility for their operations before, during and after they drill.
The ocean has always been worth protecting. Add your name and help us pass the Offshore Leasing Standards and Accountability Act now.
The post Lessons from Coastal Legends appeared first on Ocean Conservancy.
Welcome to Cádiz
When we arrived in Cádiz in April, we knew that we would be spending the next months working on an experiment about underwater soundscapes. What we did not yet know was how much of our time would be spent carrying equipment through the city, rebuilding experimental frames, solving technical problems and trying to convince various pieces of equipment not to end up at the bottom of the Atlantic.
Cádiz itself was a pretty good and beautiful place to start.
The city is located at the very tip of a narrow peninsula and is surrounded by the Atlantic on almost all sides. There are beaches almost everywhere, small streets leading through the old town, the harbour with its many boats and plenty of places where you can simply sit down and watch the sea. It did not take us long to understand why Cádiz is sometimes called La Tacita de Plata, the Silver Cup.
Our first evening was still fairly relaxed. After arriving and settling in, we went out together for a drink and explored a little bit of the city. It was a good introduction to our new home. The next morning, however, the relaxed part was over and GAME 2026 officially began for us.
Our project focuses on how underwater soundscapes may influence the colonization of hard surfaces by marine sessile organisms. To investigate this, we used standardized PVC settlement panels mounted on experimental frames and exposed them to different underwater soundscapes.
Over the course of the experiment, we monitored which organisms settle on the panels and checked whether the developing communities differ between the different acoustic conditions. The panels themselves were only 15 x 15 cm in size, but the frames, which were holding them while they were underwater, were much larger and required quite a bit of construction and preparation.
So, before we could investigate anything, however, we had to build everything.
Building the experiment
The first weeks in Cádiz were all about getting the experiment ready. Before the panels could go into the water, we had to prepare the equipment, rebuild the experimental frames and organize everything needed for the different parts of the experiment. Our setup consisted of large rectangular frames made from PVC pipes that carried the 15 x 15 cm settlement panels while they were in the water. In addition to this, we had speakers for the sound playbacks and ropes, buoys and weights that kept everything in position.
Although, there were frames left from a previous GAME project that was done in Cádiz, we decided to build new ones, which meant sourcing new material, cutting and assembling PVC pipes, preparing the panels and putting the different parts of the setup together. Some materials were bought locally, while others had to be ordered. This also resulted in one of our first small fieldwork adventures: transporting several metres of PVC pipes in a public transport bus through Cádiz was not exactly an everyday activity. We did not have a car at the time, and the large hardware store, where we bought some of the material, was quite far away, so getting everything back to Cádiz meant taking several buses while carrying long PVC pipes through crowded streets and vehicles. We bumped into things more than once, attracted a fair amount of attention and quickly realized that carrying several metres of PVC through a busy city is not as easy as it sounds. At one point, the combination of researchers, long PVC pipes and a local hardware store became what we jokingly refer to as the “Bus Hardware Store” episode.
Building the frames also taught us quite quickly that fieldwork rarely goes exactly according to plan. Some parts required a bit of improvisation and technical problem-solving, and when we reached a particularly stubborn technical issue, we even called Liam’s father in Germany for some additional advice. Although he was not directly involved in the project, his background in mechanical engineering and his experience with practical technical problems made him a useful person to call when we needed another perspective. A video call across Europe was not exactly part of the original plan, but it turned out to be a useful addition to our fieldwork toolkit.
At the same time as we worked on the set up, we were preparing the recordings of natural underwater soundscapes that would later be used for the experiment. For this, we built a deployment system consisting of a concrete-filled bucket, a wooden pole and a HydroMoth attached to the pole. The idea was simple: the heavy bucket keeps the structure stable on the seafloor, while the hydrophone records the surrounding natural soundscape above it. The practical part was considerably less simple. Several heavy loads of concrete had to be transported through Cádiz, and once the equipment reached the beach, getting the concrete-filled bucket into position was another workout altogether. We used a two-wheeled hand truck to move the heavy bucket across the beach and then into the shallow water. From there, we worked our way out by snorkeling and swimming, carrying and guiding the setup into position. The water was no more than about two metres deep, so there was no need for a boat.
The setup may have looked a little unconventional, but it was based on the plans we deleoped for recording natural soundscapes during the preparative course in March. After plenty of cutting, drilling, tying, carrying and assembling, the first major pieces of the project were finally ready. The frames were taking shape, the equipment was coming together and our first soundscape recordings were underway.
With the construction phase coming to an end, there was only one major question left: where exactly will we put everything?
When the plan changed
Finding a suitable experimental site turned out to be one of the more complicated parts of the project.
Our original plans involved a site in a nearby marina, but the situation changed when we were informed that construction work was planned close to the site. The associated noise would have interfered with the acoustic conditions required for our experiment, making the location unsuitable for our setup. We therefore had to move the experiment to a different location at relatively short notice. This meant adapting the setup and transporting the frames again. In the end, we found our new home at Puerto América, at the north-eastern tip of the city.
The change was a good example of how fieldwork can sometimes require a little flexibility. You can spend weeks discussing the experimental design, the set up and the site selection, but once you actually arrive at the water, there are always things that you could not have predicted from a map.
The new location gave us enough space for the experimental setup and allowed us to continue with the project. Hence, the frames were finally transported to Puerto América, weighted and installed.
Getting the frames into the water was actually much easier than building them in the first place. Once we had transported the frames to the harbour, we were able to get them into position and secure them relatively smoothly. The real challenge had been the preparation on beforehand: assembling the large PVC structures, attaching all the necessary components and making sure that everything was ready for deployment.
After weeks of preparation, the frames were finally in the water. The structures that we had spent so much time building on land were now ready to become the basis of our experiment.
From this point on, the focus shifted from building the experiment to monitoring what was happening around it.
Hydrophones, boats and one very expensive swim
Once the experiment was running, the HydroMoths became an important part of our regular monitoring. These small underwater recorders allowed us to record the acoustic conditions around our experimental frames and to measure the sound levels reaching the area of the experiment. This helped us to keep track of the underwater soundscape throughout the experimental period and to verify in hindcast what acoustic conditions the organisms on the settlement panels were actually exposed to.
Of course, regular monitorings also meant regularly getting the equipment in and out of the water. And this was when one of our more memorable fieldwork incidents happened. One day, Liam was alone at the harbour and had a fairly straightforward task: retrieve a HydroMoth, download the data and put it back into the water. Everything went well until the moment when the HydroMoth decided to make the last part of the procedure considerably easier for itself.
It slipped out of his hands and disappeared into the water.
We tried to retrieve it by diving down, but the visibility was extremely poor. Finding a relatively small piece of equipment underwater turned out to be much harder than expected, and despite our efforts, we could not recover it. It was certainly not part of the original plan, but fortunately, the experiment could continue. The lost HydroMoth has since become one of those fieldwork stories that is much easier to laugh about afterwards.
The regular monitorings also revealed how quickly conditions around the experimental site can change. One day, for example, we arrived at the harbour and found a boat parked remarkably close to our experimental setup, almost directly next to our buoys. Luckily, nothing was damaged and the boat did not cause any problems for the frames, but it was certainly an unexpected sight when we arrived.
Working in a harbour means that we are sharing the space with many other users, and sometimes the surroundings have a few surprises in store for us. Fortunately, most of them have been harmless so far.
From PVC panels to marine communities
The most interesting changes, however, did not happen above the water.
They happened on the settlement panels.
At the beginning of the experiment, the panels were simply pieces of PVC. We sanded their surfaces and standardized them so that they would provide suitable settlement substrates for marine sessile organisms. After deployment, there was not much to see.
Then the first organisms started to arrive.
During the first sampling events, we began to see the panels changing. Small organisms had settled on the surfaces, and the communities became increasingly diverse. Ascidians and bryozoans were among those colonizers that became particularly noticeable, together with worms, crustaceans and algae.
Suddenly, the panels that we had spent weeks preparing were becoming real pieces of habitat.
That was probably one of the most rewarding moments of the project. You knew exactly what a panel looked like before it went into the water. Then you retrieve it a few weeks later and had to figure out what has colonized it.
Some organisms were relatively easy to recognize. Others required a microscope, identification guides and considerably more patience.
Our supervisor was a huge help with this part of the project, especially when it came to identifying organisms that were less obvious at first glance. What initially looked like a small patch of something growing on a panel, could turn out to be an entirely different taxonomic group once you took a closer look.
And sometimes the organisms were simply fascinating to look at.
Despite the fauna and flora on the panels, we encountered small crustaceans, fish and other animals using the experimenta