Oceans cover more than 70% of Earth’s surface and support the food, climate, and biodiversity systems that billions of people depend on. This archive tracks real progress in marine conservation — from expanding protected areas and restoring coral reefs to reducing plastic pollution and rebuilding fish populations. Each story focuses on what’s working and who is making it happen.
The International Coral Reef Initiative launched in December 1994, when eight nations — from Jamaica to Japan — met in the Bahamas and pledged the first global partnership devoted entirely to coral reefs. Reefs cover less than 1% of the ocean floor but shelter roughly a quarter of marine species, and until then, no international body had spoken for them alone.
The Law of the Sea treaty entered into force on November 16, 1994, giving the world its first comprehensive legal framework for the ocean. Negotiated by consensus over nearly a decade, it established 200-nautical-mile economic zones and declared the deep seabed the “common heritage of mankind” — a quietly radical idea still shaping ocean governance today.
CITES, the first global treaty governing the wildlife trade, became binding law on July 1, 1975, after 80 countries had gathered in Washington two years earlier to finalize the text. It now covers more than 40,900 species across 185 parties — a quiet paperwork revolution that showed nations could agree to police what crosses their borders for nature’s sake.
Earth Day began on April 22, 1970, when an estimated 20 million Americans gathered at more than 12,000 events to demand their country pay attention to the planet. In New York alone, a quarter-million people filled a car-free Fifth Avenue. Within three years, it had helped shape a generation of landmark U.S. environmental law.
Rachel Carson’s sea trilogy, completed with The Edge of the Sea in 1955, taught mid-century readers to see the ocean as a living, interconnected world. The Sea Around Us alone spent 86 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Years before Silent Spring, Carson was quietly building the audience that would make modern environmentalism possible.
