Skip to content

Green Light for Chilean Conservation: The President of Chile Makes Piedra del Viento an Official Coastal Marine Sanctuary

Blog written by Juan Buttazzoni, Director of Fundación Rompientes Marine Conservation Institute has partnered with Chile’s Fundación Rompientes to help turn a threatened stretch of central Chile’s coastline into a Blue Spark. Now, with a formal presidential designation, we celebrate the news and look ahead to the next steps for this new marine protected area.…

Read More

Frontrunners in Global Marine Protection

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a vital tool for conserving marine biodiversity and ocean health in the face of human-caused threats, such as habitat destruction, overfishing, and climate change. They provide a wide range of benefits, such as increasing biodiversity and biomass, protecting endangered species, recovering overfished populations and sequestering carbon, justifying their inclusion as…

Read More

Status Watch: How Well Are Coral Reefs Protected Around the World?

Tropical coral reefs are some of the most diverse and productive ecosystems on our planet. Often called the ‘rainforests’ of our oceans, coral reefs host incredible levels of biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services that many organisms – including humans – rely on. Globally, coral reefs cover less than 0.1% of our seafloor, but provide…

Read More

President Trump Attacks Two National Monuments in Utah; Protection for Critical Ocean Ecosystems Could Be Next on the Chopping Block

Washington, D.C. — Lance Morgan, President of Marine Conservation Institute, a leader in securing strong protection for the oceans’ most important places, condemns President Trump’s decision to rescind protections for two U.S. national monuments that was announced yesterday in Salt Lake City, Utah. The President reduced the size of Bears Ears National Monument and Grand…

Read More

IMPAC4 Highlights Pt. 1

This week is the 4th International Marine Protected Areas Congress (IMPAC4) in La Serena – Coquimbo, Chile, and our team’s there connecting with colleagues and sharing some of our major initiatives to help protect the ocean, MPAtlas.org and the Global Ocean Refuge System (GLORES). Our friends at OpenChannels are providing amazing live-blog coverage from the conference and here are…

Read More

Marine Conservation Institute Applauds U.S. Progress Towards International Marine Conservation Targets Under the Leadership of President Barack Obama

Seattle, WA—In a report released today, Marine Conservation Institute highlights that the U.S. has strongly protected 23% of all federal and state waters in marine reserves (over 1,087,000 sq mi), nearly double the 632,300 sq mi – or 13%– strongly protected as of 2015. The SeaStates 2016 report is a rigorous, quantitative accounting of strongly…

Read More

An ocean of concern as the G7 nations prepare to meet

When leaders of the world’s seven most industrialized nations meet in Japan May 26-27 their decisions on key issues- such as how to energize a frail global economy and restrain the spread of terrorism- will likely capture the news headlines. But the leaders of the United States, Canada, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy,…

Read More