ORCAS Consulting are beyond stoked to announce that we are establishing a presence in the proud nation of Costa Rica!
ORCAS co-founder Rhys McIntosh has moved Central America to be closer to his wife’s family raise their beautiful daughter.
As such, ORCAS are now poised to provide our consulting serves to Central and South America. We look forward to developing any opportunities and working with you!
¡PURA VIDA!
The ‘coastal zone’ is an area with many definitions. At its simplest, it can be defined as:
‘the part of the land and the sea that are affected by each other’s proximity’
But if we think deeper on that definition, it is not difficult to see how the ‘coastal zone’ can extend quite a ways – physically or metaphorically – either landward or seaward.
Some examples: the winds of a storm blowing over an expanse of ocean thousands of kilometres from shore give rise to the waves that eventually impact the coastline, defining it’s shape, governing the character of its sands and determining the types of organisms that live there. Similarly, rains that fall thousands of kilometres inland run together, gathering bit by bit into rivers that eventually reach the sea, discharging the terrestrial material picked up along the way.
For this reason, at ORCAS we take a broad, holistic view of the coastal zone. We appreciate the complexities of working in this environment – this includes the physical, biological and environmental complexities as well as the social and economic complexities.
ORCAS Consulting is a full service coastal and freshwater environmental consulting company. Looking for a better way to do business and service their clients, founders Jose Borrero, Dougal Greer and Rhys McIntosh started ORCAS in January 2025 after leaving the company they co-founded nearly a decade earlier.
The name ORCAS has multiple layers of meaning. Firstly it is out of respect to Orcinus orca, one of the most powerful, graceful and intelligent animals on planet earth and one of the undisputed masters of the oceanic environment. The orca is known as a fearsome, apex predator that is also highly social and works in teams to accomplish its goals. The orca is known to inhabit every coastal environment on earth and as such is an apt metaphor for a group of coastal and environmental science professionals with a diverse skillset and decidedly global outlook and ambitions.
Secondly, the letters O-R-C-A-S serve as an acronym covering many of the core principles that our company embodies:
Today, adaptation to the changes occurring in and around our coastal environment are of paramount concern to everyone on earth. The pressures of an ever-increasing population in the coastal zone combined with the effects of rising sea levels, increasing temperatures and ongoing threats from natural hazards such as storms, cyclones and tsunami are creating challenges on scales never before experienced by human society.
Therefore we coined the acronym ORCAS to reflect our primary aim of helping humanity in its quest to live harmoniously and resiliently in an around the coastal environment. Recognising the that only constant is change and that we must adapt in order to survive and thrive.