International Ocean Institute (IOI)

08/06/2026

🌊 Divers as Agents of Change

Most people never see what lies beneath the surface. Divers do.

While marine pollution often remains hidden from public view, divers witness its impacts first-hand: ghost nets entangling marine life, plastic debris resting on the seafloor, and ecosystems struggling under increasing human pressures.

🤿 A unique perspective

This direct connection with the underwater world often transforms divers from observers into stewards. Every dive becomes an opportunity not only to explore, but also to document, protect, and restore.

📊 Citizen science in action

Around the world, divers contribute valuable observations on marine species, habitat health, invasive organisms, and marine debris. These efforts help strengthen scientific knowledge and provide information that can support conservation and management decisions.

♻️ From awareness to action

Many dive communities actively remove marine litter and ghost gear while helping to monitor and protect fragile ecosystems. By connecting what happens beneath the surface with actions taken above it, divers help bridge the gap between ocean science, policy, and society.

Ocean stewardship begins with seeing the ocean differently.

💬 What is one daily habit you'll re-imagine this week to help protect our ocean?

📸 Photo credits: All photos courtesy of Guardians of the Blue

07/06/2026

🌊 Traditional Stewardship: Knowledge that Enriches

Ocean governance is often associated with scientific research, policy frameworks, and management plans. Yet some of the world's most valuable knowledge about marine and coastal environments has been developed through centuries of observation, experience, and stewardship by Indigenous and traditional communities.

Increasingly, ocean governance practitioners recognise that these knowledge systems can complement scientific research by providing important insights into environmental change, resource use, cultural values, and community priorities.

Through the IOI Ocean Academy Mexico, Liliana Rodriguez Cortes and her collaborators are fostering dialogue between local universities and Mayan communities, creating spaces where knowledge is exchanged rather than simply transferred. By listening before teaching, participants build trust, share experiences, and explore how different ways of knowing can contribute to more effective and inclusive ocean governance.

This initiative seeks to strengthen Mayan engagement with formal ocean governance frameworks while ensuring that community perspectives, cultural heritage, and local realities are reflected in conversations about the future of the ocean.

As global efforts continue to advance sustainable ocean management, initiatives such as this remind us that good governance depends not only on sound science, but also on meaningful participation, mutual respect, and the recognition that stewardship takes many forms.

💬 How does your culture connect to the sea? Share an Indigenous or traditional ocean practice in the comments below.

06/06/2026

🌊 No Blind Spots: Argo Data for Sound Ocean Decisions

What happens beneath the ocean's surface often determines what happens above it.

Through a global network of more than 4,000 autonomous profiling floats, the Argo programme continuously measures temperature, salinity, oxygen, carbon and other key variables, providing the data that underpin climate forecasts, sea-level projections, and our understanding of ocean change.

In this World Oceans Day contribution, Mauro Vargas highlights the Argo-Dome Project in the Central American Thermal Dome, a highly productive marine region located approximately 200 nautical miles offshore. Sustained by nutrient-rich upwelling, this area supports fisheries, biodiversity, and ecosystem services of regional and global importance.

The project goes beyond observation. By generating open-access data from an area that largely lies beyond national jurisdiction, Argo-Dome contributes to the scientific foundation needed for ecosystem-based management, marine spatial planning, and the implementation of the BBNJ Agreement.

Equally important, it demonstrates how ocean science, governance, and ocean literacy can work together. Through the "Adopt-a-Float" initiative, students can follow real-time ocean observations and gain first-hand insight into how knowledge is transformed into action.

Because better ocean decisions begin with better ocean knowledge.

05/06/2026

🌊 The Ocean Every Day: Closer Than You Think

When we think about the ocean, we often picture distant coastlines, coral reefs, fishing fleets, or marine protected areas. Yet, as Kwami Agbetossou reminds us, the ocean is woven into our lives in ways that are far less visible, but no less important.

The air we breathe is sustained by marine phytoplankton, microscopic organisms that produce roughly half of the world's oxygen. The medicines in our cabinets draw on compounds first discovered in marine organisms. The phones in our pockets, the clothes we wear, the food on our tables, and the global supply chains that sustain modern economies all depend, directly or indirectly, on a healthy and functioning ocean.

For ocean governance practitioners, this interconnectedness carries an important lesson. The ocean is not merely an environmental issue or a sectoral concern. It underpins public health, trade, food security, climate regulation, energy transitions, and economic development. Decisions taken far from the coast, in ministries of finance, transport, health, education, or industry, can have profound consequences for the ocean, just as ocean change increasingly shapes outcomes on land.

This reality is reflected in the growing recognition of the ocean as a cross-cutting component of sustainable development. Whether discussing climate adaptation, resilient supply chains, blue economies, biodiversity conservation, or social equity, the ocean is rarely a separate conversation. More often, it is the thread connecting them all.

Ocean literacy helps reveal these often-overlooked links. By understanding how the ocean supports everyday life, citizens, businesses, and policymakers are better equipped to make informed decisions and to recognise that ocean stewardship is not solely the responsibility of coastal communities or maritime sectors. It is a shared responsibility that extends to all of society.

On this World Oceans Day, we invite you to look beyond the shoreline and consider how often the ocean touches your daily life. You may discover that the ocean is far closer than you think.

04/06/2026

Each Olive Ridley that crawls onto Odisha’s beaches links a classroom inland to a moonlit shoreline. When a turtle washes up tangled in netting, it’s a reminder that distance isn’t what separates us from the ocean - habits are. IOI Ocean Academy’s local‐language sessions help fishers, students, and village councils translate turtle-protection rules into nightly practice - dimmed lights, cleared nets, quieter motors. In doing so, knowledge shifts from instruction to reciprocity: the turtles trust the shore, and the shore learns to deserve that trust.

Reflect on your own shoreline, however far away, and share one habit that keeps migratory life moving. Tag it and join a lineage of guardianship rather than inheritance.

03/06/2026

Storm-softening mangroves, fish-feeding reefs, moon-phase fishing songs - so much of the ocean’s real wealth never appears in GDP tables. A 100-metre Sundarbans mangrove belt, for instance, can slice wave height by up to 66 %, saving billions in avoided cyclone losses. Coral reefs and coastal ecosystems across the Bay of Bengal quietly sustain fisheries that feed millions, yet their value is still labelled “priceless” simply because it isn’t priced. Along those same shores, generational sea lore guides fishers when satellites fail.

Our post today looks Beyond Blue GDP to count... what really counts: coastal protection, food security, cultural heritage, and climate resilience. Bangladesh is already weaving ecosystem valuation and marine-spatial thinking into policy debates - early steps toward national ocean accounts that reward regeneration rather than extraction.

Swipe through to see the hidden balance sheet of the sea, then tell us one ocean benefit you rely on but never see in economic headlines. Tag so we can remind decision-makers to measure what matters. 🌊💙

02/06/2026

When ocean science is spoken in Kiswahili, it stops being distant jargon and starts sounding like home. From coastal fishers to inland students, IOI Ocean Academy Kenya is weaving familiar words into lessons on coral, currents, and climate, turning curiosity into confidence and community into guardianship. Since 2024 more than 256 learners have completed our Kiswahili sessions, proof that language can close the gap between policy and practice and give every voice a seat at the ocean-governance table. Share an ocean word in your own language and help us keep the conversation local, living, and loud.

01/06/2026

UN World Oceans Day 2026 Countdown

Reimagining a better future is the first step to building it.

From 1 June to 8 June we’ll share one story each day that asks us to look at the sea in a new light and act accordingly. This year’s theme - “Reimagine : Beyond the world we know, a new relationship with our ocean” - reminds us that the ocean is already in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the climate that shapes every life on Earth.

Humanity has just taken a historic step by agreeing to govern large parts of our shared ocean together through the BBNJ Agreement. But closing the distance we created will take more than a treaty; it will take a shift from passive inheritors of the ocean’s generosity to active guardians of its future.

Follow , share these posts, and join us as we explore how to move beyond blind spots, beyond business-as-usual, and toward a truly collective stewardship of the blue planet. 🌍💙

22/05/2026

📢REGISTER NOW https://courses.ocean.mt/ioicourse/
Deadline for Registrations: 31 May 2026

🌟Registrations now open:

IOI Training Programme on Regional Ocean Governance for the Mediterranean, Black, Baltic and Caspian Seas
https://courses.ocean.mt/ioicourse/

This training programme is a flagship activity of IOI and builds upon the more than 40 years' experience of the International Ocean Institute in conducting training and capacity building programmes on ocean governance. One of the main objectives is to assist in the formation of a core of decision-makers who will be aware of the complex global and regional contemporary issues of coastal and ocean management.

The Ocean Governance content covers contemporary approaches to coastal and ocean management, with an emphasis on moral, ethical and legal values in Ocean Governance (equity and peaceful uses of the ocean) under the governance architecture of UNCLOS and related international; instruments and agreements.

Formally accredited by the University of Malta!

📍 Location: Malta
📅 Dates: 4 November – 4 December 2026
⏳ Application deadline: 31 May 2026
📝 More information and application form: https://courses.ocean.mt/ioicourse/

29/04/2026

📣Read the latest IOI News on the April IOInforma here:
https://www.ioinst.org/news/ioinforma-news-bulletins-1/