Sea Shepherd Brazil
Protecting the "Clients" of the Ocean
Sea Shepherd Brazil is a frontline marine conservation organization dedicated to defending aquatic wildlife across Brazil’s 7,000-kilometer coastline and the vast Amazonas basin. Founded in 1999, the organization focuses on combating illegal fishing, poaching, and plastic pollution to protect species like river dolphins, manatees, sharks, and all other aquatic wildlife. Sea Shepherd Brazil relies on its digital presence to mobilize public support and drive legislative change. To maintain this connection to the public without being sidelined by technical vulnerabilities or cost-prohibitive traffic spikes, the organization joined Project Galileo.
"We basically consider the fish and the marine wildlife our clients... and we are trying to defend our clients with the best technology possible." — Tim Losbrock, IT Consultant, Sea Shepherd Brazil
Helping Build a Better Internet through Conservation
Sea Shepherd Brazil needed a secure, reliable platform where environmental advocacy can thrive even when facing sudden, massive surges in global attention. When high-profile collaborations occur, such as with famous Brazilian singer Xuxa or during international petitions to free founder Paul Watson, the organization has seen traffic increase by over 900%. During these critical windows of opportunity, Sea Shepherd Brazil cannot afford for their website to go offline.
"Those peaks [in traffic] are literally the reason why we have the website... Without Cloudflare, that would be unpayable. We wouldn't be able to serve those peaks." — Tim Losbrock, IT Consultant, Sea Shepherd Brazil
Cloudflare Products & Impact
- Content Delivery Network (CDN): Because Cloudflare caches content across its global network, Sea Shepherd Brazil’s website remains fast and accessible to users in South America, even when its origin servers are located in North America. This significantly reduces server costs and latency.
- WAF (Web Application Firewall): Sea Shepherd Brazil utilizes WordPress, which requires constant vigilance. The WAF provides a crucial layer of protection, filtering traffic for known vulnerabilities and giving the team peace of mind even if security patches are not applied instantly. This is particularly vital for Sea Shepherd Brazil’s online store and account creation pages, which previously suffered from hundreds of fraudulent bot sign-ups per day.
- Zero Trust: The organization is expanding its use of Zero Trust tunnels to secure internal web applications. This allows them to place a secure login layer in front of sensitive tools, ensuring that only authorized team members can access backend infrastructure.
Defending Marine Wildlife in the Digital Age
The protection provided by Project Galileo directly translates to real-world impact. During the "Free Paul Watson" petition, Cloudflare cached 97.65% of the traffic, meaning Sea Shepherd’s small, affordable server only had to handle 2% of the load. This efficiency allowed the organization to focus its resources on boots on the ground operations—like the Rede Contra Redes (Network Against Nets) campaign to remove ghost nets or the Cação é Tubarão campaign to raise awareness and change laws about shark meat consumption in Brazil schools.
“Cloudflare is one of those underdogs—you don't even realize what it's doing because it's just there, doing its job perfectly.” — Tim Losbrock, IT Consultant, Sea Shepherd Brazil
