Extraordinary Projects, Exceptional People, that’s how Rolex describes its Rolex Award laureates. Since back in 1976, the Rolex Awards for Enterprise have supported individuals whose dreams, spirit of enterprise and creativity have advanced human knowledge and well-being.

Take Barbara Block, for instance. She is a 2012 laureate from the US. Her aim is to, “move the public to protect the populations and prevent the demise of the last great marine predators.” Those predators include tunas, sharks, turtles, whales, seals and seabirds. According to the project description on the Rolex Award website, Block’s “team conducts ‘conservation oceanography’ incorporating the latest advances in sensor technology, ocean observing systems and computational methods to provide resource managers and policy-makers with data on the sustainability of both exploited and protected marine predators.” These animals are of course indispensable to their habitat and ecosystems. But overfishing, the destruction of their environment and pollution have reduced their numbers globally.

So to research the real predicament of these large animals, marine biologist Block has studied them extensively, particularly in the North Pacific in “hotspots”, places with nutrient-rich waters that provide them with all the food they need such that they return each year for a while. Further, “she helped develop the first pop-up satellite archival tag, a device that detaches itself from the fish on a pre-programmed date and floats to the surface of the sea where it transmits archived data via satellite.”

According to the website, “With the receipt of a Rolex Award, Block will make progress towards protecting this area through the creation of a network of marine ‘predator cafés’, or biological ocean observatories, which will be distributed along the Californian coastline to monitor the animals and transmit data on their movements to a satellite or cell network for relay to the lab.”

Other amazing projects and efforts have been recognized by the Rolex Awards. As the company writes in huge letters on their Rolex Award website, “With the right amount of passion, ANYONE CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING”.

So start today. If you are between the ages of 18 and 30 and are helping to tackle the world’s most important challenges in the fields of science and health, applied technology, exploration and discovery, the environment, or cultural heritage, click here to apply to the 2014 Rolex Awards for Enterprise. Every individual effort counts.