OceanVines began on the docks of Hong Kong, where a small group of sailors, scientists, and citizens of the city kept asking the same question: what if yachts — symbols of leisure and luxury — could become vessels of learning, stewardship, and change?
From that question, a movement was born. We refit and repurposed the heritage motor yacht Sea Tiger as our floating classroom, laboratory, and ambassador across the South China Sea and beyond.
Today, OceanVines is a nonprofit collective of mariners, marine scientists, students, and storytellers — committed to making Asia's oceans visible, valued, and vibrant for the generations to come.
And no one learns it from behind glass. We teach in the salt, the swell, and the silence between.
The future of the South China Sea, the Coral Triangle and the Kuroshio current is being written here. Our next generation of stewards must speak with their own accents — and lead.
We're transforming the yachting industry from a symbol of luxury into a symbol of stewardship — training crews who will be ambassadors of the ocean for life.
Every voyage feeds open citizen-science data — water samples, plankton tows, reef surveys — into the public record, in partnership with regional researchers.
From Hong Kong's junk-sailing past to the navigational traditions of Polynesia and the Ryukyus — we honour the seafarers who came before us, and learn from them.
We don't just teach about the ocean. We teach how to live with it — through choices, daily habits, and lifelong commitment.
Three decades on the water. Paul has spent his career inside the yachting industry — racing it, building it, captaining its finest vessels — and is now devoted to turning it into a force for ocean good. He leads Sea Tiger and the seamanship curriculum aboard.
Lifelong ocean enthusiast and entrepreneur. Barry brings the strategic, philanthropic, and community-building muscle of Hong Kong's TGG Group to OceanVines — anchoring the initiative in the city that raised it.
Serial entrepreneur and 20+ year climate leader. Co-founder of Maximal Concepts, Plastic Conscious, and Disruption Labs. Producer of The Last Glaciers and A Plastic Ocean.
OceanVines is a collective. Marine biologists from Hong Kong universities, sailors from across the region, educators, and the first cohorts of student ambassadors — all sailing under the same flag.
Hong Kong's waters host nearly as many hard coral species as the entire Caribbean. Pink dolphins, finless porpoises, and seagrass meadows live within sight of the world's busiest skyline.
Yet over 15,000 tonnes of plastic waste enter our marine environment every year, and only one in five reefs remain healthy. We sail from here because the urgency is here — and because the world's eyes are too. If we can turn yachting into stewardship in Hong Kong, we can do it anywhere in Asia.
They just need a boat, a mentor, and a horizon. Help us put them at sea.