Mr. El Ali, a Senegalese national, has been a long time environmental activist, Le Monde newspaper naming him among the world’s one hundred most influential ecologists. After obtaining a professional diving certification in France, he became the director of Oceanium in 1984, when the institution was just a diving school and started to discover the many environmental issues in the oceans and seas. In the 1990s, his fight to preserve the environment focused on raising awareness around overfishing and deforestation, and on educating communities dependent on the seas and their products to sustainably manage their natural resources. His work also included supporting creation of natural reserves and giving talks on environmental issues in Dakar schools which are part of the Action Ecoles program.