For years, honestly since SEVENSEAS started, readers have asked us versions of the same questions. How do I break into this field? How do I make my next career move? Who’s working on the kind of project I want to be part of? Where do I find someone who’s done what I’m trying to do?

If you’ve ever wished you knew someone working in marine policy, or a researcher in another country doing fieldwork like yours, or a retired expert with decades of perspective, or a peer at the same career stage navigating the same decisions, you know the problem. The path through ocean conservation isn’t obvious at any stage. It’s not always just on a job board. It’s almost always: someone took a chance on someone else, made an introduction, answered a late-night email, said let me put you in touch with…

That’s true for an undergrad trying to find their first internship. It’s also true for a mid-career professional pivoting from research into policy. It’s true for a senior scientist exploring an unfamiliar region or sector. And it’s true for two early-career conservationists in different countries who’d both benefit from comparing notes.

Today we’re launching the SEVENSEAS Mentor Network — a beta version of something this community has been asking for forever. It’s a directory of people in ocean conservation who are willing to be reachable, and a directory of people who are looking for guidance, advice, or just a thoughtful conversation. At any career stage. In any direction.

It’s free. It’s open globally. And it only works if enough of us show up — as mentors, as mentees, and often as both.

A note on what we built, and specifically what we didn’t

We are deliberately not trying to reinvent the wheel. We didn’t build a social network. We didn’t build a messaging platform. You just register yourself in the directory and the actual conversations happen on LinkedIn, where your profile and professional identity already exists. We stay out of the way. We kept it short, and once you’re in, you’re done.

That’s the whole design.

So why not just message people on LinkedIn directly?

Because there are millions of people on LinkedIn, and most of them don’t care about ocean conservation, don’t check their messages, or have accounts they haven’t logged into in years. Cold messaging strangers is a bad experience for everyone — both the sender (who gets ignored) and the receiver (who’s overwhelmed).

The SEVENSEAS Mentor Network is different because everyone in it has actively raised their hand. This directory is curated from our community: the roughly 50,000 newsletter subscribers and the thousands more who visit our site every month. People who already care about ocean conservation, are already invested in the field, and have explicitly said yes, I want to be part of this. That’s not a small distinction. It’s the entire point.

Who this is for and what mentoring actually means

We want to expand what mentorship can look like, because the traditional version, “senior expert generously dispenses wisdom to grateful newcomer,”  is only one possibility, and not always the most valuable one.

Mentors can be senior researchers, mid-career professionals, retired experts with decades of perspective, or someone who’s only a year or two ahead of where you are. Sometimes the most useful person to talk to is someone who just navigated what you’re trying to navigate.

Mentees can be undergrads, grad students, career changers — but also senior professionals exploring a new area of conservation work, or people late in their careers wanting to learn from younger voices about tech, media, or doing things differently. There is no age cap, no career stage requirement, and no shame in asking questions at any level.

Peer-to-peer connections are encouraged. Two early-career conservationists in different countries comparing notes can be just as valuable as a one-way mentorship. Two retired marine biologists trading thoughts on policy work could be transformative. We don’t think mentorship has to flow downhill.

And critically: there is no obligation. Sometimes mentoring is a 30-minute Zoom call once. Sometimes it’s a five-minute response to a message about which grad program is realistic. Sometimes it’s reading a cover letter or saying I don’t know, but here’s who might.

You set the terms. You respond when you can. If your inbox is full this month, that’s fine. The whole point is to lower the friction for the kind of small, generous interactions that already happen informally in this field, and make them findable.

How it works and we need you to sign up

1. Browse the directory (Find a Mentor or the Mentee Directory) and see profiles with focus areas, regions, languages, career stages, and a short note about what each person can offer or is hoping to learn. We have a few sample profiles up to get you started.
2. Click their LinkedIn link and send a brief, specific message.
3. The conversation happens on LinkedIn  exactly like any other professional connection.

That’s it. No new platform to log into daily. No notifications. No “engagement metrics.”

If you’re working in ocean conservation in any capacity — research, policy, NGO work, fisheries, journalism, art, education, citizen science, communications, diving, restoration, anything — please consider joining as a mentor:

→ Become a Mentor

If you’re looking for guidance, regardless of your career stage:

→ Apply for Mentorship

Both sign-ups take about five minutes. We do a quick admin review (we want to keep this a real, intentional community) and then your profile goes live.

Please share this

If you read this and think I know exactly the person who should be in this directory — please send them this article.

Forward it to colleagues. Mention it to your students. Send it to the friend who’s been lost between undergrad and a real job in conservation. Pass it along to your alumni networks, your former professors, the diving instructor who introduced you to the ocean in the first place. Share it with schools, university programs, marine labs, NGO listservs, professional associations, anywhere this might land in front of someone who’d benefit.

A directory is only as useful as the people in it. The single most valuable thing you can do today, even if you don’t sign up yourself, is share this with two people.

Read this before signing up

This is beta. We’ve tested it, but you’ll find rough edges. Tell us about them at info@sevenseasmedia.org — we’ll fix and improve as we go.

This is community infrastructure, not a service. Nobody is being paid. Nobody is guaranteed a match. The Mentor Network works to the extent that the people in this community decide to make themselves reachable, and others reach out thoughtfully.

This is a starting point. Group programs, peer cohorts, structured curricula — those may come later. Let us know what you’d want to see.

Whether you’re joining as a mentor, a mentee, or both, please read our Code of Conduct. It covers the basics: respect, honesty, no harassment, no commercial solicitation. We’re 18+ only and we take community standards seriously.

Ready?

Take five minutes today.

→ Become a Mentor → Apply for Mentorship → Browse the Mentor Directory → Browse the Mentee Directory

The ocean conservation sector has a generosity problem in one direction . People genuinely want to help, but the pipeline for that help is informal, opaque, and dependent on whether you happen to know the right people. This is one small attempt to make it less so.

If you’ve ever wished someone had given you five minutes of their time when you were starting out, or if you’d like five minutes of someone else’s time now, sign up, share it, and help us build something useful.