Sea•thos Foundation Debuts with Hurley Campaign

The Sea•thos Foundation, a new Venice not-for-profit, held its first event at its coastal and marine consulting firm ASR's location on Abbot Kinney last week. Sea•thos focuses on improving the coastlines and surfing conditions through sustainable efforts, including ASR's artificial reefs in the ocean and plastic bottle reduction.

The evening gathered together local activists and broader organizations to support the Hurley H.O.P.E. (Helping Other People Everywhere) campaign. The campaign's most recent endeavor involves a clothing line created by Brandon Boyd of the band Incubus.

The event, although private, quickly turned into a swarm of guests from wall-to-wall of the beautifully constructed ASR workspace. "I had no clue it would be so extremely packed," said Boyd's publicist Jen DiSisto.

Each wall was adorned with either Boyd's illuminated artwork or snapshots of him in the creative process.

The art, inspired by the Sea•thos campaign for plastic bottle reduction, was used as an outline for an upcoming Hurley clothing line. Shirts and tank tops with the colorful art were designed to promote environmental consciousness and to raise money for the H.O.P.E. campaign, a project involving artists to help spread education and awareness to younger individuals throughout the world.

Sea•thos, which started four months ago, is housed in ASR'offices at 1212 Abbot Kinney Blvd. The organization, although new, has been dedicated to its mission to educate people about the ways, both directly and indirectly, they impact the oceans.

Founded by Chris Jensen, Michael Schwab and Nick Behunin in late 2010, Sea•thos has its eyes on fixing the ocean's pollution and industrial overfishing through projects involving artists, such as Michael Torquato de Nicola and activists, such as Sam George. 

For example, Torquato de Nicola is in the process of creating an art collage, the Plastic Wave Project, out of plastic bottle litter collected throughout Venice in order to create awareness about the waste of one-time use plastic bottles.

"It's time we start to protect our world's most valuable resource, our oceans," Jensen said. 

Co-founder Schwab said, "The health of our oceans is one of the most important issues of our time, and we have dedicated our lives to try to help this vital resource we love so much."

The Boyd/Hurley clothing line goes out sale at Buckle nationwide and on Hurley.com beginning Friday. The line will have a public launch on Saturday, April 2 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Hurley )( SPACE Gallery, located at 1945 Placentia Avenue in Costa Mesa.