Just as much as we love our oceans, the
The award, which confers prestige, funding leverage and ecotourism opportunities, aligns governments' interests with biodiversity conservation. Blue Park status also provides a benchmark that both private and governmental funders can use to measure the impacts of their investments.
The ocean is the Earth’s biggest life support system, and healthy marine ecosystems are essential for human survival and well-being. As a leader in the global movement to protect vast ocean areas, Marine Conservation Institute uses the latest science to identify important marine ecosystems, advocate for their protection, and measure progress toward effective, sustainable marine protection.
Our priority is to help create an urgently-needed worldwide system of Blue Parks, or recognized highly protected areas, to ensure the future diversity and abundance of marine life. To encourage meaningful progress and accurately reflect the current state of marine protection, we also developed and actively maintain the world’s most comprehensive online marine protected area database, the Marine Protection Atlas.
We are an active member of the High Seas Alliance, Deep Sea Conservation Coalition and National Ocean Protection Coalition, working to defend and advance marine protection at home and abroad. Our work in the California Seamounts Coalition leads efforts to protect vital deep-sea habitats off the California coast. This work builds on our decade-long work to conserve coral ecosystems. We also model deep-sea habitats and research their ecosystems to promote protection for these fragile, hard-to-find living treasures.
For 25 years, Marine Conservation Institute has been leading conservation efforts to save our ocean. Growing awareness of threats to our ocean has led to significant expansion of marine protections, but the environmental challenges facing our blue planet are enormous. Your support for our mission is more important now than ever before.
