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Oceans 8 Expedition Next Stop, Europe

With five of eight expeditions completed, Jon Bowermaster's OCEANS 8 project is well on its way to accomplishing its goal: Sea kayaking around the world, one continent at a time. Five expeditions, funded primarily by the National Geographic Expeditions Council and sponsored by Mountain Hardwear, Perception, Werner and Kokatat, have so far taken Bowermaster and his various teams through the Aleutian Islands, down the coast of Vietnam, to the heart of the South Pacific, into South America's Altiplano and up the coast of Gabon in west Africa. Next up: Europe, Australia and Antarctica. "The great thing for us is not so much the differences we're seeing among the people we meet who live and depend on the sea, but the commonalities," says Bowermaster. Whether it's fishermen in Vietnam, Chile or Gabon, the concerns of people who make a living off the sea are similar worldwide. The same is true for the health of the oceans. From the Bering to the South China Sea, all are at risk due to overfishing, global warming and pollution.

"When we're done with the project—sometime in 2007—we’ll be able to look back and see not what makes these various environments so different, but what makes them so similar," Bowermaster says.