Captain Mark Schrader

Mark Schrader, a two-time single-handed circumnavigator of the world and the first American to do so via the “Five Capes” of the Southern Ocean, is intimately aware of our fragile ocean environments.

A pioneer in promoting awareness of the consequences that dumping of plastics and other waste present to marine life, through lectures and print Mark has carried the message around the world to quantify and document the scope of the problem.

The ocean became important to this Nebraska native as a teenager, with moves to California and Washington, and his sailing interests have taken him twice around Cape horn, through the South Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans as well as North Atlantic and Alaskan waters. He believes thos of us who love and value the ocean have an obligation to be proactive stewards of this precious environment and important resource.

In 2009, Mark embarked on his most important mission-related expedition, Around the Americas. As David Rockefeller, Jr., one of the expedition’s co-founders, noted,

“In the realm of ocean exploration, there are not many ‘firsts’ still to be accomplished. But Mark Schrader has achieved one. He skippered Ocean Watch as the first-ever continuous, west to east circumnavigation by sail of the American continents.”

“Around the Americas was an adventure story”, Mark has said. “But, embedded in the adventure story, we have our science lessons and our education lessons. Our mission was to draw a line, literal and symbolic, around the Americas. We’re an island surrounded by an ocean that is in trouble.”