Engineers with an Ocean Story to Tell: How Pisces Oceans Helped Balean Find Its Voice

Great ocean innovation deserves to be heard, but the people building it are not always the ones best placed to tell its story.

Balean, an emerging ocean innovation platform based in the Netherlands, understood this from the start. During the early development of their crowdfunding platform for ocean impact, the founders created an Early Adopter Program to bring a cohort of ocean organizations onto the platform. To ensure those organizations showed up in an impactful, narrative-driven way, they engaged Pisces Oceans to help emerging ocean projects from around the world craft and tell their stories.

The problem beneath the surface

At the outset, the challenge for Balean was twofold. As a new platform in the ocean impact ecosystem, Balean needed to articulate its own value proposition and, at the same time, equip its early adopters with the communications capacity to strengthen fundraising, public engagement, and investor confidence.

Engineers by trade, Balean's founders recognized the importance of storytelling but didn't feel they had the skills to weave it into their platform themselves. They wanted Balean to be narrative-driven so the platform could reach more people, and they knew that vision needed a storyteller to work alongside the builders.

A partnership that started at a workshop

Balean co-founder, Bart Oor, first met Pisces Co-CEO Natalie Gilson at her ocean storytelling workshop in The Hague in 2024. The workshop inspired the Balean team, shaping how they communicate their work and showing them that storytelling is central to impact-making.

Bart approached Pisces afterward to help bring the Balean vision to life. What Pisces brought to the table was ocean storytelling experience, expertise, and a reputation for helping ocean organizations tell their stories well. From day one, this was a collaboration grounded in shared belief in what narrative can do for the ocean.

The work

Rather than a rigid sequence, the engagement grew around the things Balean needed most. Pisces worked with Balean to shape its platform narrative and value proposition, then developed a story-driven approach to the Early Adopter Program, ensuring participants had the knowledge, tools, and support they needed to craft and share their stories in a compelling way.

As a core component of the Early Adopter Program, Pisces designed and delivered a series of tailored storytelling workshops, spanning eight weeks and involving participants across Canada, Europe and Central America, focused on helping diverse ocean organizations turn the complex science and innovation that guided their work into accessible, motivating narratives.

As the platform concept moved toward launch, Pisces also developed Balean's brand identity, giving its narrative a visual home.

The impact

Balean emerged from the engagement with a strengthened international identity, unified program messaging, and 10 organizations in its Early Adopter Program equipped to communicate their missions more effectively.

At the conclusion of the Early Adopter Program, Balean's founders had achieved a narrative-driven platform that speaks clearly across countries and cultures, without having to become storytellers themselves overnight. They equipped their early adopters with storytelling skills, demonstrating the growing importance of story within the global ocean sector.

The partnership between Balean and Pisces shows that storytelling frameworks can scale across borders, serving both immediate visibility needs and long-term advocacy goals.

"Working with Pisces strengthened Balean's ability to support emerging ocean initiatives around the world. Strategic communications, storytelling, and hands-on implementation experience make Pisces a powerful partner for accelerating marine conservation and blue innovation." - Bart Oor, Co-Founder, Balean Foundation

Takeaways for ocean innovators

Pisces' work with Balean shows what's possible when the people building ocean solutions partner with people who know how to tell their story. Technical brilliance and compelling narrative are not competing priorities; they're two sides of the same coin. Having the right partner in your corner helps make sure both are possible.

Have an ocean story that you want to tell but you're not sure how?

Take a page from the Balean book, and get in touch with us. If your team is helping the ocean, we're here to help you.