If conservation is a language, then communications is the bridge

by David Ojok, CRC Communications

Hey, I’m David Ojok, and yes, “coral” somehow became my full-time conversation starter. At the Coral Restoration Consortium (CRC), I serve as Communications Support staff, turning the science and sweat of reef restoration into stories people actually want to read.

When people hear I moved from land-based climate advocacy into the coral world, they often picture me trading a megaphone for a snorkel. The truth is quieter and stranger: I never left the climate work I love, I simply learned to read it in a new language. From my laptop, I’ve watched reefs become libraries of lived knowledge, pages written in polyps and tides. It’s funny, I still crack jokes about “adopting a pet shark”, but behind the smile there’s a steady astonishment at how much the ocean teaches those of us willing to listen.

My work at the CRC is less about salt on my skin and more about salt in other people’s stories. I gather fieldnotes, stitch together footage and voice memos, and turn messy, muddy, brilliant practitioner work into something that people can understand and feel. I’m a translator: taking the cautious science from a researcher, the slow wisdom from a fisher, the gritty tenacity from a technician, and turning those into hooks that make people stop scrolling and start caring. My years as a climate advocate and youth ambassador taught me how to move audiences; here, that skill meets place-wise humility, and the result is storytelling with teeth and tenderness.

There have been moments that changed me, I imagine working one day on a short video of a coral transplant, hands trembling with hope, that would reach a minister’s inbox and open funding conversations, or a fisher’s half-laughing, half-grieving voicemail that would become the three lines that make a donor donate. The coral space has left me nostalgic for the unexpected beauty I’ve found here, and hungry to unlock the other corners of this world that I haven’t yet touched. Each story I work on feels like opening a door into a room filled with people, knowledge, and hope I didn’t know existed.

If conservation is a language, then communications is the bridge. We don’t just report data; we invite people into a relationship with a living place. I came to the CRC to learn how to listen better, and I’ve stayed to learn how to make others listen too. If these words land with you the way those fieldnotes land with me,  with a little ache and a little hope, then let’s keep building that bridge together. The ocean is wide, and I can’t wait to see which new stories are still waiting beneath the surface.