Who is Oceans & Emotions?
I’m Anna, a marine biologist and educator with a passion for connecting science, creativity, and emotional awareness. With Oceans & Emotions, I create workshops and projects that link our daily choices to the ocean — from fashion and microplastics to body awareness and healing.
My goal is to open spaces where knowledge and empathy meet, inspiring curiosity, resilience, and change.
The idea for Oceans & Emotions grew out of both my scientific path and my personal journey. I graduated as an ecologist (BSc., University of Vienna, Austria) and went on to become a marine biologist (MSc.) at the University of Ghent, Belgium. After my formal studies I lived in Dahab, South Sinai, Egypt for some months to become a scuba divemaster, where I fell in love with the Red Sea and its unique but fragile coral reefs.
My journey continued as a pre-doc at a Portuguese research institute where I conducted field and lab studies about marine invasive species, and microplastic pollution. At some point I decided to leave Portugal and return home, to Vienna, for a while, however my interest in oceans did not stop: I enrolled in a new study, ecotoxicology (University of Applied Sciences, Vienna; and Postgraduate Studies at SETAC German Branch), where I study how chemicals travel through our bodies, from and to our environment and end up in the sea. Along the way, I realized that science alone isn’t enough — facts can inform, but they rarely transform. What truly changes people is when knowledge is linked to emotion, creativity, and personal experience.
I’ve lived and worked across different countries, from Portugal to Brazil to Austria to Turkey, and to Belgium, always moving between cultures and searching for new ways to connect people with the ocean, even far away from the coast. My own experiences with dance (Salsa, Forró, Biodanza), movement, drumming, and emotional awareness became just as important as my research. They taught me that the ocean is not only an ecosystem to protect but also a metaphor for our inner worlds — holding memory, depth, and resilience.
Oceans & Emotions was born from this realization: that science and soul belong together. It is my way of weaving together what I know and what I’ve lived — marine science, sustainability, body awareness, and creativity — into workshops and projects that inspire curiosity and empower people to take action.
I believe what makes me different is that I don’t fit neatly into one box: I am a researcher and an educator, but also a mover, a writer, and someone unafraid to bring emotions into science. That’s why I created Oceans & Emotions — a space where facts and feelings meet, where we can learn differently, and where protecting the ocean becomes part of protecting ourselves.