Alexandra Carolina Orué Carranza-Youth Advisory Council Member 2025-2026
About This Event
Alex (they/them) is a 22-year-old Marine Biologist from Perú. After learning about all of the beauty that can be found in peruvian waters, as well as all the threats and challenges said creatures face, they decided to dedicate the rest of their life to ocean conservation and marine biodiversity protection. And as the years passed, their fascination only grew, as well as their determination to preserve those beautiful ecosystems.
Plastic pollution and shark conservation where their main motives to start their studies. A material so common causing so much trouble? Populations of such beautiful animals decreasing rapidly because of us? The more they learned, the more their curiosity grew, eventually getting more interested in Marine Protected Areas and their crucial role, as well as ocean governance and how to impulse science-based solutions into national and international regulations. With those areas of interest defined, they joined SOA Perú, a platform where they first encountered young people who advocated fervently for the oceans. They are currently part of both the Biodiversity Team (as an executive member with the Science Outreach Coordinator role) and Climate Change Team (helping in the organization of the Pre-COP 30 and in workshops for kids), assisting in different responsibilities from organization of events to creation of content for environmental education.
Seeking to expand their knowledge and experience, they applied and was accepted in the Ocean Leaders Fellowship from Sustainable Ocean Alliance, where alongside 39 other young ocean defenders, was able to attend two of the most important conferences in 2025: the 10th Our Ocean Conference in Busan, South Korea; and the 3rd United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France. In both, they attended several side events focused on plastics, sharks and MPAs, while reaching out to important stakeholders and engaging with their national delegation.
Besides their work with SOA, they are also a volunteer in Oceana Perú’s “Defensores Azules” program, being chosen as one of the team coordinators in Lima. There, they attend workshops about different topics in ocean conservation, as well as in-person events that involved citizen education, beach cleanups and helping local fishermen with technology.
They are currently working on their thesis about microplastics in the Paracas National Reserve, an important Peruvian MPA that has faced plenty of hardships since its creation. Sampling water, crabs and clams, they are seeking to find answers about microplastic contamination in these secured areas, as there are not many previous studies with this approach. Their research has granted them the Cabieses Scholarship from the Scientific University of the South to fund part of it, as well as the first place in one of the presentation categories in the Symposium of Marine Biology Research Trainees (SINEMAR) from 2024.