Miguel Alamilla and Romi Badillo are 2015 Ocean Heroes

For the past five years, Oceana has been recognizing leaders in ocean conservation, education, and advocacy from around the world. In Belize, Biologist Miguel Alamilla and Captain Romaldo Badillo were named as the 2015 Ocean Heroes at a ceremony in Caye Caulker. Alamilla has been managing one of Belize’s most popular marine protected areas, the Hol Chan Marine Reserve. And he is involved in a monitoring program to protect the marine turtles that live and nest on the shores of Ambergris Caye.  A number of conservationists lauded his work at the ceremony on Saturday.

Kira Forman Castillo

“The mission is the mission, Miguel always says the mission is the mission so let’s go, either rain or shine he always figures out how to get things done.”

Guadalupe Rosado

“In a community like San Pedro it takes a lot of character when it come to working with the diversity of stakeholders and especially doing the kinds of work that we do. And I think that it is very important for a leader like him to be able to find that balance in how do we engage the community, how do we empower the staff but at the same time he makes sure that we maintain that common vision for protected areas management; both for biodiversity but also for the people that we are working for.”

Mayor Danny Guerrero

“He has been very instrumental when it comes to the environment, I see it in his board of directors in Hol Chan and actually he has always been an advocate when it comes to that and he is also the type of person that is kind of quiet but he is always advising us, advising entities or institution when it comes to the environment.”

Miguel Alamilla, Winner, OCEANA Ocean Hero Award 2015

“For many year San Pedro was a fishing village, a fishing community so we have had fishing as a main stay on the island and we still have a small commercial fishing activity within Ambergris Caye, so we have heard about our illegal fishing so that is a challenge but one of the major concerns is development, basically tourism development. I hear a lot of people on the island say oh we are dependent on tourism but we are being made to understand that tourism is dependent on our reef and our marine systems.”