Category: New & Notable

Vicky Lam and Anna Luna Rossi at UNOC 2025.

Reflections from UNOC 2025: Advancing inclusive ocean sustainability

Vicky Lam and Anna Luna Rossi at UNOC 2025.

Sea Around Us Research Associate, Dr. Vicky Lam, and MSc Student, Anna Luna Rossi, at UNOC 2025.

By Vicky Lam.

Nice, in southern France, is known for its stunning Mediterranean coastline, and it proved to be a fitting host city for the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC) 2025, held from June 9 to 13. With over 15,000 participants from around the world, the event brought together governments, scientists, NGOs, Indigenous leaders, and civil society to advance action to conserve and sustainably use the ocean.

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The Sea Around Us MSc student, Anna Luna Rossi (fourth from the left), with her NGO Reserva colleagues.

Youth making waves: Advocating for marine conservation at UNOC3

The Sea Around Us MSc student, Anna Luna Rossi (fourth from the left), with her NGO Reserva colleagues.

The Sea Around Us MSc student, Anna Luna Rossi (fourth from the left), with her NGO Reserva colleagues and actress Auli’i Cravalho at UNOC 2025.

By Anna Luna Rossi.

June 2025 marked the third edition of the United Nations Ocean Conference, hosted in Nice, France, and co-organized by France and Costa Rica. UNOC3 falls within the Ocean Decade initiative to create a framework for communicating and using ocean knowledge to generate real-time actions for safeguarding our marine resources.

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French President, Emmanuel Macron, being interviewed at UNOC 2025. Image by France.TV.

Dr. Daniel Pauly calls out France’s double standards on marine protection

French President, Emmanuel Macron, being interviewed at UNOC 2025. Image by France.TV.

French President Emmanuel Macron, being interviewed at UNOC 2025. Image by France.TV.

 

During an interview with French national television, President Emmanuel Macron was confronted with images from David Attenborough’s Ocean documentary, which shows the gigantic nets of bottom trawlers operating in the Mediterranean dropping hundreds of tonnes of all kinds of fishes on a boat after razing the seafloor and everything in their way.

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Ola_catch reconstructions

Sea Around Us launches catch reconstruction course to empower global fisheries research

Ola_catch reconstructions

 

Sea Around Us data users interested in learning how to perform a catch reconstruction update now have access to a suite of free video tutorials.

The step-by-step guides, available in English with carefully curated subtitles in Spanish, French, and Chinese (with more languages on the way), are presented in an easy-to-understand animated video format led by a researcher named Ola.

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A school of bluefin tuna

Leading scientists call for permanent ban on high seas exploitation

A school of bluefin tuna

Bluefin tuna. Image by Tom Puchner, Flickr

Extractive activity in international waters – including fishing, seabed mining, and oil and gas exploitation – should be banned forever, according to top scientists.

The high seas, the vast international waters beyond national jurisdiction, cover 43 per cent of the planet’s surface and two-thirds of its living space. Yet they remain largely unprotected and increasingly threatened by overfishing, climate disruption and the rising interest in deep-sea mining.

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