Pamela Ortega

Bay Islands Program Manager

Pamela was born and raised in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. She has loved being in nature since she was a child climbing mountains near her neighborhood. After becoming an environmental engineer at Catholic University of Honduras, she worked in remote communities in southern Honduras. She soon discovered her paradise—Utila, a beautiful little island that few people on the mainland knew about—and what started as a vacation soon became home. She moved to work with the private sector, and continued to SCUBA dive. Pamela worked for the Bay Islands Conservation Association, specializing in protected area management and sea turtle conservation, and when she learned coral reef monitoring in 2010 she couldn’t wait to share it. A certified diver since 1998, she is a divemaster, coral reef monitor, and trainer. She enjoys community work, nonprofit organization strengthening, unifying community sectors to work together, and helping create an empowering and thriving community to protect coral reefs. She joined CORAL in July 2012.

From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau