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

Just 44 marine managed areas, out of more than 16,000 worldwide, hold over half of all the ocean under legal protection. They are the closest thing the world has to proof that the ocean can be managed at scale, held by institutions carrying decades of hard-won practice. We exist to keep that practice strong, and to share it generously wherever it is needed next.

Clownfish sheltering in an anemone on a reef in the Chagos Archipelago. — Chagos Archipelago. Photo: Dr. Anne Sheppard.

Size matters. Establishment is only the beginning.

Declaring a large ocean area is not the same as managing one well. 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.

Our approach

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 is rooted in the practice of managing the world's largest ocean places. As the world's attention moves, we carry that proven practice to wherever it is needed next, so established places and emerging ones strengthen each other.

Approach

Convene, synthesize, bridge

We keep our finger on the pulse of management at scale and share what one place learns, in collaboration with the practitioners and communities who choose to participate, so the next place, 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 world is turning to the high seas. We're using that moment to strengthen large-scale management.

Global conservation attention is shifting to the high seas. For the managers of large-scale places in national waters, that shift can make an already demanding job harder.

Our answer is to do what we do best, and give generously. By sharing the hard-won lessons of national large-scale management with the people building protection on the high seas, we help a new and far larger kind of ocean place take shape, and deepen the world's understanding of why managing at scale matters at all. That understanding flows back to the national places where the practice was earned. This is reciprocity: supporting the high seas is how we strengthen the roots.

How we do it