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About Mission Blue: Listening to the Ocean

Listening to the Ocean is Mission Blue’s global bioacoustics programme, using underwater sound to help Hope Spot® Champions understand biodiversity, ecosystem condition, and human pressures within their sites.

This programme is being implemented through select Hope Spots, with each site designed around local conservation priorities and a shared global science framework.

Participate in Listening to the Ocean
© Enrico Marcovaldi

How Listening to the Ocean Works

Our programme combines continuous acoustic monitoring, scientific analysis, and interpretation to generate evidence that advances conservation, advocacy, and policy outcomes in Hope Spots around the world.

Mission Blue Science, programme partners, and Hope Spot Champions define local conservation questions, deployment locations, and advocacy needs.

Passive acoustic tools record the marine soundscape over extended periods without disturbing wildlife. Scientific partners assess biological sounds, daily and seasonal activity, ambient soundscape structure, and human noise such as vessel traffic.

Support provided:

  • Acoustic monitoring equipment
  • Technical guidance on deployment
  • Scientific analysis and interpretation

Results are interpreted for local conservation, management, policy, advocacy, and community engagement.

Support provided:

  • Programme coordination and reporting
  • Support translating findings into conservation and advocacy outputs

Multi-year monitoring builds baselines and reveals shifts in biodiversity, behaviour, resilience, and stress.

© Lynton Francois Burger

© Lynton Francois Burger

© Lynton Francois Burger

© Lynton Francois Burger

Trusted Science, Transparent Governance

Listening to the Ocean operates with clear agreements around data ownership, access, use, storage, quality control, publication, and recognition. Hope Spot Champions have access to findings from their sites, while contributing to broader scientific and policy processes.

Why this matters:

For Hope Spots

Provides credible evidence to support protection, zoning, and management decisions.

For Champions

Strengthens advocacy with site-specific, defensible data and enriches storytelling through the power of sound.

For the Ocean

Builds a global network of listening Hope Spots contributing to comparable datasets on biodiversity, ecosystem condition, and ocean noise.

Designed for Local Leadership

No specialist bioacoustics expertise is required. Monitoring is designed to be practical, non-invasive, and feasible for local teams, with scientific design, analysis, and interpretation led centrally by Mission Blue and programme partners.

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© Cristina Mittermeier
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