​Dr. Mere Takoko is a Māori conservationist, scholar, and Chief Executive of the Pacific Whale Fund. With iwi affiliations to Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, and Rongowhakaata, she traces her whakapapa to Paikea, the legendary whale rider. Her defining mission is the restoration of one million whales to the Pacific Ocean.

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As the architect of the He Whakaputanga Moana declaration and the Te Mana o te Tohorā legislative framework, Dr. Takoko is pioneering legal personhood for cetaceans across the Polynesian triangle. Through the Pacific Whale Fund, she is developing financial instruments to fund large-scale whale conservation, such as critical ecological corridors. This includes a US$100 million Blue Resilience Bond and the Indigenous-led Moananui Nature Standard—mechanisms grounded in the macroeconomic reality that a living whale sequesters carbon, fertilizes phytoplankton, and stabilizes ocean systems at a value conventional markets have historically failed to price.

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Central to this strategy is the Te Moananui Sanctuary: a Pacific-wide network of marine protected areas (MPAs) designed around whale migratory corridors. Initially encompassing 12.5 million square kilometers across Polynesia, the sanctuary has the potential to scale beyond 20 million square kilometers, forming the largest contiguous marine protection regime on Earth.

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Crucially, this design inverts conventional marine conservation. Rather than fencing off static polygons where whales are treated as passing visitors, Moananui treats the migratory path itself as the unit of protection. By integrating ancestral knowledge with dynamic rāhui—customary closures based on real-time ecological conditions rather than fixed calendars—the sanctuary adapts to the living ocean. The map moves because the whales do.