Dr. Christine A. Ward-Paige, Founder

Hello!

I'm the founder, funder, and creator of eOceans.

I’m a professional scientist (PhD, MSc, BSc). I’m also a mom, foster parent to over 50 dogs, and have planted 450,000+ trees. With over 700 hours of scientific diving experience and leading global participatory science research, I’ve published some of the top cited papers that influenced international policy change.

Seeing a need for faster, more cost-effective, transparent data processing, analysis, and dissemination, I created the eOceans app—a tool that has the potential to unlock an estimated $291 billion in time and data for scientists, researchers, managers, governments, and impact-driven organizations. With eOceans, our customers and users can focus on what truly matters—collecting the right data, building relationships, and building a thriving, livable planet for all.

From the field: The story behind eOceans

eOceans didn’t start in a boardroom—it evolved from 20 years of fieldwork, 700 hours underwater on research dives, thousands of interviews with divers, fishers, local knowledge holders, and scientists, countless hours entering data, writing code, formatting reports, and seeing research become outdated by the time it was published.

I became disillusioned with the system—slow work, high publishing fees that blocked access to my own work, a peer review process I no longer trusted, and unethical expectations of collecting and keeping data OR making them open access without considering the risks or the rights of local communities.

After a decade of research across 38 countries, I realized monitoring, science, and policy needed to move faster, be more collaborative and inclusive, and operate ethically. In 2017, while conducting a decade-late, million-dollar project for a Canadian protected area, I knew something had to change. Ecosystems needed to be understood in near real-time, with all available data and insights, and be accessible to answer urgent questions and direct decisions.

That’s when I decided to create the eOceans app—a mobile app combined with an analysis platform to make science, monitoring, and decision-making faster, accessible, and accurate.

Challenging the status quo

During my MSc, I discovered that sewage pollution was quietly degrading coral reefs. The traditional thinking was that dilution would solve the problem, but I proved otherwise. Nutrients from human sewage were too diluted to detect in the water, but corals and sponges absorbed them — recording the pollution over time. More nutrients meant fewer corals and more boring sponges—weakening the reefs and making them vulnerable to storms, algae, and destructive species. It was a wake-up call. But, the managers didn’t believe it and didn’t act. Reefs in the Florida Keys continued to decline.

For my PhD and post-docs, I turned my focus to sharks and rays, evaluating the potential of crowdsourced data from local experts to track populations. I built global participatory science projects, including eShark, eManta, and the Great Fiji Shark Count, and watched as divers, fishers, and ocean lovers flooded in with data. The results were incredible—faster, inclusive, and more powerful than anything I had done before. But it wasn’t enough. These projects were still isolated, and the insights were still out of date and locked in reports that don’t update.

A bigger vision

Then, in 2013, while on my first maternity leave, I had an idea: What if we built an app to track sharks and rays in real time? But then I asked myself, “Why stop at sharks and rays? What if we could track all species, their health, the environment, and human activities—because everything is connected?”

And then another question: “Why just build this for my research? What if we built a platform that could power all research—any project, any organization, anywhere in the world?”

That idea became eOceans—a real-time, collaborative platform designed to accelerate science, unlock hidden patterns, and support better decisions for ocean management and conservation. Today, its estimated to have the potential to unlock $291 billion in time and data for scientists, researchers, governments, investors, businesses, tourism, and impact-driven organizations.

Ocean to all ecosystems

We demonstrated that eOceans could transform data science in ocean spaces, from sharks to threats, enabling faster discoveries and more effective decision-making. We also tested and had successful outcomes in lakes. We’re now expanding this method to all ecosystems—and we’re excited to see where the possibilities may lead.

The future of ecosystem science

eOceans isn’t just an app—it’s a revolution in how we work together to understand and protect our ecosystems. Science shouldn’t take years to inform decisions. Decisions should not be based on guesses. With the right tools, both can happen in an iterative, near real time, collaborative, transparent way.

No matter where you are, what project you’re working on, or what space you’re trying to understand and make decisions about—eOceans is built for you.

Relevant links:

• View Christine’s CV

• The Conversation

• Medium

• ImpactStory

• Google Scholar

• ORCID

• Research Gate