Daniel Cáceres Bartra

Before any title, I consider myself an ecologist. My work is driven by the need to see humanity clearly—not to romanticize our species, but to recognize us as an overpopulated and invasive species. In my region, biodiversity evolved over millions of years, yet humans arrived less than 30,000 years ago, placing immense pressure on ecosystems. To protect humanity, we must first safeguard biodiversity. I am a dive instructor, marine biologist, and conservationist, motivated by a love for biodiversity and a belief that humanity has a future if we learn to coexist with nature. Coexistence requires understanding and respecting the ecological rules that govern life.

That’s why I’ve focused my life recently on advocating and lobbying for a moratorium on deep-sea mining to protect the least-known ecosystem on Earth. Deep-sea mining represents the ultimate frontier—an unexplored, fragile ecosystem that holds countless secrets about our planet’s history and future. Expanding exploration today isn’t just about discovering what’s there; it’s about understanding ecosystems holistically and ensuring they remain intact for future study and appreciation. By advocating for protection over exploitation, we expand the meaning of exploration to include stewardship and respect for what we have yet to fully understand.

We are working for the protection of the entire Tropical Sea of Peru, an area that holds 70% of the country’s marine biodiversity, is an Ecologically or Biologically Significant Area (EBSA), an Important Shark and Ray Area (ISRA), and an Important Marine Mammal Area (IMMA). It is home to the “Blue Five” — sharks, rays, turtles, dolphins, and whales—and serves as the southernmost point of the Eastern Tropical Pacific Corridor. Despite its critical importance, less than 2% of this area is protected—and even that limited protection allows harmful activities under “preexisting rights.”

My work is pushing boundaries by focusing on what should have been foundational from the start: conservation and the integration of ecological concepts. Conservation measures should preexist any other measures, and ecological principles should form the basis of planning. Explorers of the past laid the groundwork for understanding the world, but they lived in a different era—before plastic, fossil fuel dependence, and with a much smaller human population. It was understandable that their focus was on discovering and understanding the unknown. Today, rather than the race for discovery that explorers of the past faced, we confront a race to protect and conserve pristine and vulnerable ecosystems. Our expanding human range, combined with an addiction to consumption and the drive to expand consumption capacities, leaves these ecosystems more fragile than ever.

Today, we honor the legacy of past explorers by evolving exploration into something that matches the urgency of our times: a focus on coexistence, protection, and leaving a planet that future generations can continue to explore and cherish.