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Mission Blue Dives into the 2025 IUCN World Conservation Congress

(ABU DHABI, UAE) – Last week, Mission Blue team members including Dr. Sylvia Earle and Chief Scientist Dr. Tessa Hempson attended the IUCN World Conservation Congress (IUCN WCC). The IUCN WCC occurs only every four years, and represents a significant opportunity for nature conservationists, decision-makers, and leaders to come together to develop and set benchmarks for global priorities in conservation.
Our goals at Mission Blue are to continue the work from the UN Ocean Conference in Nice. This includes affirming the One Ocean Partnership, supporting aligning motions through co-sponsorship and voting (see below), and continuing to build a network that is ready to turn high level ambition into impact for ocean protection. 
About the One Ocean Partnership, Dr. Tessa Hempson says, “The One Ocean Partnership isn’t about creating something new — it’s about bringing us together.…

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Exmouth Gulf Marine Park Declared, Protecting Hope Spot

Cover image: Courtesy of Oceanwise Australia
EXMOUTH GULF, AUSTRALIA – Exmouth Gulf and the Ningaloo Coast form one of Earth’s extraordinary marine ecosystems, home to whales, dugongs, dolphins, turtles, manta rays, sea snakes, and migratory shorebirds. The area is also home to significant Aboriginal cultural heritage, with evidence of continuous connection and stewardship stretching back more than 40,000 years. Its seagrass meadows, mangrove systems, and sheltered waters provide important nursery grounds for marine life and play a vital role in the broader Ningaloo ecosystem.
On September 4, 2025, the Cook Government announced the establishment of a whole-of-gulf marine park, marking a major milestone in conservation for the region. This outcome reflects decades of persistent research and advocacy, outlined in detail in the timeline below.…

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The Mission Blue Kelp Initiative: A Hope Spot Partnership for Kelp Protection

Cover Image: Researcher Gonzalo Bravo working on photo-quadrats in Argentina’s kelp forest. Image: Mariano Rodriguez.
The Mission Blue Kelp Initiative is a partnership with The Plum Foundation to support the conservation and protection of kelp forests in Hope Spots around the world. Given the ecological significance of kelp forests, this partnership prioritizes the protection of healthy kelp ecosystems where possible, the recovery of degraded areas by mitigating stressors, and when necessary, active restoration methods. 
We believe protection to be the most effective strategy, but in the face of warming ocean temperatures due to global climate change, other approaches are also required. The Hope Spot network includes over 30 Hope Spots with kelp forests in their waters, and in 2025, we are supporting active conservation, research, and restoration efforts with researchers in four key areas around the globe.…

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New Co-Champions Announced for Cape Whale Coast Hope Spot

Cover image: Cape Whale Coast Hope Spot Dedication
Overstrand, South Africa – The Cape Whale Coast on South Africa’s Western Cape stretches over 200 kilometers of coastline from Rooi Els to Quoin Point. A region of striking natural beauty, the Cape Whale Coast Hope Spot hosts a complex coastline of estuaries, beaches, and bays. Offshore, the convergence of the warm Agulhas Current and the cold Benguela Upwelling creates a nutrient-rich environment that sustains a wide diversity of marine life, including important breeding areas for the endangered African penguin (Spheniscus demersus). 
“South Africa is such an incredible part of the planet, where the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean converge,” says Dr. Sylvia Earle, Founder of Mission Blue. She continues, “To be able to stand at the Cape of Good Hope and actually have two oceans, blue and green, coming together, it’s just magical.…

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Azores Archipelago Protects Thirty Percent of Waters

Cover image © Andy Mann
PONTA DELGADA, AZORES, PORTUGAL — The Autonomous Region of the Azores is making waves in marine conservation by establishing the largest network of marine protected areas (MPAs) in the North Atlantic. This historic initiative safeguards 30% of the marine environment surrounding the Azores Archipelago, covering an impressive 287,000 square kilometers.
Mission Blue recognized the waters of the Azores Archipelago as a Hope Spot in 2021, advocating for a coherent network of marine protected areas extending from the surface to the deep seafloor. The Azores Archipelago began their efforts with marine protection in the 1980s, evolving through joint collaboration among government, universities, and local communities. The Blue Azores program, launched in 2019 from a partnership between the Regional Government of the Azores, the Oceano Azul Foundation and the Waitt Institute, and the University of the Azores, has contributed to significant advances in marine conservation in the region.…

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High Seas Treaty Reached at United Nations in Historic Deal

Featured image: Sargassum floating in the Sargasso Sea, located in the Northern Atlantic Subtropical Gyre, high seas. The Sargasso Sea is one of Mission Blue’s Hope Spots located in the high seas © Philippe Rouja
(UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK) – 
After two decades of ongoing discussion, United Nations delegates from 193 nations reached a historic agreement on March 4th, 2023 to protect marine biodiversity and address climate change in international waters, also known as the “high seas”. The high seas refers to approximately 2/3rds of the world’s oceans that are not within any country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), leaving such waters vulnerable to damaging fishing and other extractive practices. 
António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, says, “This action is a victory for multilateralism and for global efforts to counter the destructive trends facing ocean health, now and for generations to come.”…

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Spain’s Canary Islands Declared a Hope Spot Amid Global Climate Change Discussion at CoP25

TENERIFE-LA GOMERA, CANARY ISLANDS, SPAIN (December 11th, 2019) –
(Spanish Translation Appears Below)
The brilliant blue waters between the Canary Islands of Tenerife and La Gomera have been called the “Hawaii of Europe” for being one of the finest examples in the world of a thriving pelagic archipelago system. Within the waves lives an extraordinary assemblage of open-ocean species, including the short-finned pilot whale (Globicephala macrorhynchus), also known as the “cheetahs of the sea”. More than 700,000 visitors travel each year from every corner of the globe to whale and bird watch, SCUBA dive and hike along the islands’ scenic cliffs.
 
 
These waters span several preexisting protected areas, or Special Areas of Conservation, such as the SAC Teno-Rasca in Tenerife, and in La Gomera SAC Santiago-Valle Gran Rey and SAC Los Organos.…

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Stories From the Ice

By Courtney Mattison for Mission Blue

If you’ve never experienced an iceberg before, you might assume that they are silent, bobbing solitarily in the ocean. In reality icebergs can be loud, crackling and popping, crunching and even rolling into one another. When a glacier expands and “calves,” it makes an explosive “bang” as a giant chunk falls off into the water, forming a new iceberg.
Ride an inflatable Zodiac among them and the sounds grow, emanating from tiny air bubbles trapped thousands of years ago and then suddenly released into the air around you. Floating ice such as this and sea ice—ice formed directly from frozen seawater—provides platforms for seals and seabirds to rest, sunbathe and catch fish. Polar bears, the Arctic’s top natural predator, rely on sea ice to hunt seals.…

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Olowalu Reef Is Announced as the First Hawaiian Hope Spot!

Photo Credit (c) Pauline Fiene

Mission Blue is honored to announce the newest member of the Hope Spot family — and the first such area in the Hawaiian archipelago! The Olowalu reef is Maui’s “crown jewel,” a one thousand-acre coral reef that is home to the largest known manta ray population in the US (430 individuals) and the oldest coral in the main Hawaiian Islands. The Olowalu reef sustains an amazing diversity of rare and unique coral species and acts as a nursery to replenish and populate the reefs of Maui, Molokai and Lanai.
In Hawaiian history, Olowalu was known as a Pu’uhonua (sanctuary) where people could take refuge, take time to reflect and heal. Given the rapidly declining resources locally and globally, the Olowalu community, in concert with many local partnerships, has taken the initiative to restore the balance that has been lost between people and nature.…

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Protect the Critically Endangered Goliath Grouper from Killing in Florida

In the earlier part of the last century, Atlantic goliath groupers were abundant from Florida to Brazil and throughout the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. If you have been lucky enough to be in the water with these creatures, then you appreciate their unflappable personality and awe-inspiring size, which reaches up to 8 feet and 1,000 pounds. The goliath grouper has no natural predators besides large sharks and humans. We are writing with regards to the latter.
Goliath groupers reached commercial extinction in the late 1980s. For this reason, in 1990 a federal and state ban on killing them was implemented for U.S. federal waters and state waters of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, followed by a 1993 ban in the U.S.…

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