Ocean Commotion is the Virginia Aquarium’s largest fundraiser, and the online auction allows our annual event to reach a vastly broader audience, with supporters participating from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin to California. Our marketing analytics indicate we reached 103,150 people online throughout last year’s auction! Making it our most successful auction to date, and we anticipate that many of our supporters worldwide will want to participate again this year!

Proceeds from Ocean Commotion will support the programs of the Virginia Aquarium, such as helping maintain exhibits and care for thousands of animals, providing educational offerings to visitors, offering outreach programs to schools, conducting research and conservation activities, and operating our nationally recognized Stranding Response Program.

The Virginia Aquarium’s list of conservation projects and efforts that the Virginia Aquarium Foundation helps fund can go on and on! The Aquarium’s conservation efforts go from being the leader of the effort In the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Saving Animals from Extinction (SAFE) program to save the critically endangered Kemps ridley sea turtles to helping eliminate single-use plastics and plastic bags and helping pass the Virginia House Bill 2159 to prohibit the intentional release or careless disposal of non-biodegradable balloons that all end up in our oceans, to being part of the 30x30 global initiative to help protect 30% of land and water by 2030 to help address climate change and biodiversity loss to joining the Ocean Conservancy to increase funding marine research and education, including programs that provide grants to support stranding response, marine debris projects and informal education initiatives to the Virginia Aquarium’s nationally recognized Stranding response team who manages the responses of all marine animals and sea turtles along Virginia’s 7,000-mile coastline to providing educational programs onsite and outreach not only to guests but also to students from Title 1 schools that do not have the funds and for some they have never seen the ocean.