May 2021: According to the Australian Charities and Not-For-Profits Commission (ACNC) Oceanic Research Institute received $150K in donations in 2019 and 2020. As an Approved Research Institute (ARI) all donated funds must be used for research. Research may be a broad category, but there is no public evidence that ORI has conducted anything that would resemble research. ORI has no employees, their “research vessels” are not seaworthy for service and rotting in Denmark. Their announced campaign to produce the “first” ocean literacy curriculum for Australia consists of a “Coming Soon” webpage which appeared in August 2020 and disappeared in December of 2021.

The ORI Facebook page is largely posts promoting the private business interests of the directors. All this begs the question: “Who are the donors of $150k and how was the money spent?” For instance, the La Boheme has been docked at a private shipyard in Denmark for about 8 years. Who is paying those fees? (We now have the answer, courtesy of the Danish newspaper Fyns Amts Avis… No One is paying those fees, they are unpaid for years.)

April 2021: Earl de Blonville has consistently claimed that none of his friends or professional colleagues have responded to my inquiries or otherwise engaged in discussions about their experiences with Earl. This is wishful thinking on Earl’s part and simply balderdash. Just this month another genuine professional guide and photographer that has known Earl for years and who Earl unsuccessfully tried to snow with grand claims of participation in a Greenland adventure confirmed “I smelled a rat and bailed out.”