Nancy Downes - Oceana

Nancy Downes

Field Campaigns Manager, Massachusetts

Oceana Staff

Nancy Downes is Oceana’s Field Campaigns Manager, based in Massachusetts, MA.

With nearly three decades of expertise in environmental advocacy, Nancy manages Oceana’s campaigns along the Mid and North Atlantic to reduce the production and use of single-use plastics, preventing new offshore oil drilling, and reducing threats to North Atlantic right whales, including entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with vessels. As part of this work, Nancy serves in an advisory role to the Business Alliance for Protecting the Atlantic Coast and serves on the Organizing Committee of the Reusable New England coalition.

After coming on board in August 2017, Nancy served three years as Field Representative in Southern California, leading efforts on campaigns to stop the expansion of offshore drilling, tackling the plastic pollution crisis, and supporting Oceana’s Pacific team on efforts to protect deep-sea habitat and complex fisheries management and conservation issues.

Prior to joining Oceana, Nancy was on the frontlines of protecting the SoCal coastline as both a volunteer activist, and for twelve years as the Southern California Regional Manager for Surfrider Foundation. She managed ten chapters from San Diego to Santa Barbara, led campaigns and educational programs on single-use plastic pollution, marine protected areas, wetland restoration, beach renourishment projects, and urban runoff.

Nancy is an eighth-generation New Englander, an avid surfer and paddleboarder, and has a dual-degree in Music and Business from University of Massachusetts, Lowell. She is fascinated with nudibranchs and cephalopods, and if you look carefully, you will find over 30 octopuses throughout her home.