A humpback whale and calf gliding through deep blue water.

From national waters to the high seas.

Best-practice management of the ocean at scale.

Big Ocean is a peer network of practitioners who hold the world's largest ocean places, convening them, sharing hard-won lessons, and carrying best practice where it's needed next.

Our approach About Big Ocean

A world map of marine protected areas: a relatively small number of very large sites across the Pacific, Indian, Atlantic, and Southern Oceans account for most legally protected ocean. — The world's large-scale marine managed areas. Map by Naiʻa Lewis. EEZ data: marineregions.org; MPA data: MPAtlas (Marine Conservation Institute) and WDPA / Protected Planet. © Mapbox © OpenStreetMap.

Size matters. Establishment is only the beginning.

The field is evolving from establishing pioneering protected areas to the broader questions of leadership, care, and long-term guardianship. Managing vast expanses of ocean should never be the work of agencies alone. It is strongest where the managers assigned to these places, and the communities bound to them by generations of kinship, work as one. We keep our finger on the pulse of best practice and support capacity-sharing and the exchange of lessons among the people, agencies, and communities who choose to participate.

People, places, and themes

Our work turns on three things: people, places, and themes.

People

The managers appointed to these places, and the communities whose kinship with them reaches back generations. Best practice needs both.

Places

The world's largest marine managed areas, from national waters to the high seas.

Themes

The ideas catalyzing the field right now. These shift as the world's attention moves. The current theme: connecting proven large-scale management to the emerging high seas, so both grow stronger.

Moana Nui, a painting of the world ocean: the rising sun, seabirds in flight, a koru-scroll wave, honu, a school of fish, a shark and a heʻe woven together. — Moana Nui — colored pencil and ink by Naiʻa Lewis, 2012.

One node among many.

Founded in 2010, Big Ocean has spent fifteen years gathering the field's managers from around the world and helping shape the guidance it now runs on. That well of experience is what we bring as established places and emerging ones strengthen each other.

Approach

Convene, synthesize, bridge

We keep our finger on the pulse of management at scale. In collaboration with practitioners and communities who choose to participate, we share what one place learns so the next, including the high seas, begins further along.

See what we do → About

Working alongside those who hold these places

A network for best practice at scale, working with the individuals and organizations that hold these places (never for them) and holding Indigenous knowledge as a starting condition.

Meet the network → Resources

Field-defining guidance & publications

Guidelines, living management tools, case studies, origin stories, and papers, by and for those managing the ocean at scale.

Browse resources → News

Current activities

What we and our partners are working on now, including with the emerging high seas.

See what's current →

The time is now to build bridges.

Just 44 legally established large-scale MPAs hold approximately 75% of all legally protected ocean. Out of more than 16,000 marine protected areas of all scales worldwide, this small handful is the clearest proof that size matters.

The high seas are a different undertaking altogether: protection on a still larger scale, in waters beyond any nation's jurisdiction. The managers who trailblazed large-scale ocean management in national waters are the closest thing the world has to professional guidance for protection at scale, and that experience is the bridge the high seas need.

How we do it