Our ocean doesn’t get enough attention and protection despite its fundamental importance. That's why we've created this officially endorsed Ocean Decade Toolkit providing key facts, imagery and other tools needed to help create awareness and inspire action.

The ocean is vital to all life on Earth

Our ocean couldn’t be more important — it makes life on Earth possible.

The ocean makes our planet habitable

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Our ocean is fundamental to the planet for many reasons — and it has been since the beginning of life on Earth.

The earliest evidence of life as we know it has been found in the ocean. Each terrestrial species found on the planet today evolved from ancient marine organisms. The vast majority of the oxygen in the atmosphere came from ocean-dwelling organisms as well. This accumulation made it possible for life to expand from the sea and thrive on land.

The ocean continues to act as the planet’s life support system, providing necessary water and oxygen and stabilizing global temperatures, so protecting it couldn’t be more important.

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The ocean has been protecting us from the worst impacts of climate change.

The ocean regulates the climate and weather

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Climate change is fundamentally an ocean issue — you could think of it as ocean change. The dark blue ocean absorbs about 93% of the excess heat caused by climate change, protecting us from the worst impacts. Scientists have estimated that if the ocean wasn’t doing this job of absorbing almost all of the heat, the average surface temperature of the planet would be over 50°C (122°F),  but this has come at great cost to the health of the ocean – a warming, acidifying and chemically imbalanced ocean is less able to deliver its vital ecosystems services.

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It doesn’t matter who you are or where you live, we all rely on a healthy ocean.

Humans are entirely dependent on the ocean

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The ocean provides food and livelihoods for billions of people across the globe, but you don’t have to live at the beach to reap the benefits of healthy seas. In fact, most resources the ocean provides humans are things we take for granted, like oxygen to breathe and water to drink and grow food with.

There are some other less-obvious ways we depend on the ocean as well. For example, certain medicines come from the ocean. Chemicals found on coral reefs have been found to help patients fight cancer and other diseases, including heart disease and Alzheimer’s. Simply being near the sea generally has a positive impact on human health, reducing stress and anxiety.

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Life evolved in the ocean, and it’s still where most animal life on Earth can be found.

The ocean is home to the vast majority of animals

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The ocean is where life as we know it evolved and where most of the animal life on Earth remains. While there are fewer marine plants than terrestrial ones, there are far more ocean-dwelling animals: 78% of all animal biomass lives in the marine environment. What’s more, scientists have estimated that 91% of the ocean’s species have yet to even be classified.

The great thing about having so much plant and animal life underwater, is that it makes the ocean the planet's largest carbon sink. When marine life excretes waste or dies, the carbon in that organic matter sinks to the seafloor, where it is stored for centuries. When it comes to fighting climate change the ocean is our key ally.

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We still haven’t visited over half our own planet — and it could hold some planet-saving secrets.

Over 80% of the ocean remains unexplored

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Although the ocean covers more than 70% of the planet’s surface and impacts the lives of every living thing on Earth, much of it remains unexplored. Research shows that over 80% of the ocean is yet to be mapped — or explored at all — by humans.

Humans have spent nearly 100 times as much money looking for life on other planets as we have on ocean exploration. However, the ocean may hold the answers to some of our greatest challenges.

By exploring our marine environments more thoroughly, we can better understand climate and weather changes, discover new disease-fighting medicines, find alternative energy and food sources, and inspire countless other innovations.

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The ocean works at such an epic scale that it can be key to solving our greatest global challenges.

Our world is shaped by the ocean

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For millions of years, the ocean has shaped the terrestrial world in which we live. From carving mountains to forming new islands from the skeletons of corals, it works at an epic scale. It’s a fact that we should remember now more than ever — the ocean is the world’s biggest heat and carbon sink, making it key to solving climate change. 

Ocean ecosystems such as seagrass beds, salt marshes, coral reefs and mangroves can sequester carbon from the atmosphere at several times the rate of terrestrial forests. Billions of tons of CO2 are captured and safely stored by the ocean each year. 

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The ocean is our planet’s life-support system, and we don’t have a backup.

There is only one ocean

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Although the ocean is divided into five regions — the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic and Southern Oceans — it is actually one body of water that connects globally. Thus, what happens to the ocean in one location can ultimately have an impact anywhere else, whether it’s negative, like a toxic oil spill, or positive, like reducing pollution or the creation of a marine protected area that allows marine life to recover.

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Download and use free photos and video from our Ocean Image Bank

(Inspired by the UN Ocean Literacy Principles)

There are 7 things absolutely everyone should know about the ocean…

The first of the three biggest issues facing the ocean is climate change, which is causing the ocean to warm at a rate not seen since just after the last ice age. Since 1910, we’ve raised the temperature of the upper ocean by over 1 degree C. 

This is affecting ocean life in three major ways. First, ecosystems such as coral reefs are very vulnerable to ocean temperature change. Underwater heat waves have been the biggest contributor to coral loss over the past two decades. In fact, between 2009 and 2018, we lost about 14% of coral worldwide, mostly from recurring, large-scale bleaching events.

Second, warming water temperatures create stronger, more destructive hurricanes and cyclones. Due to the heat transfer between the ocean and the atmosphere, storms have higher wind speeds, heavier rainfall and more severe flooding than ever before. The unseen impact on underwater ecosystems can be as devastating as the impact on land. 

Third, the sea level is rising. Two main things contribute to sea-level rise: glaciers and ice sheets melting and the ocean water itself expanding as a result of the excessive heat. These both relate back to human-caused climate change.

We’re causing ocean warming and deadly underwater heat waves

Ocean acidification, or the long-term change in the ocean’s chemical makeup, is caused by carbon absorption. The more CO2 the ocean soaks up (which, ironically, helps mitigate climate change), the more the water’s pH levels become acidic. 

Changes in ocean chemistry can impact marine life in many ways. For example, species that use calcium carbonate as building blocks for shells and skeletons — like oysters and corals — are at risk of dissolving if the ocean’s pH level gets too low. Additionally, high-acidity water can interfere with species’ chemical defenses and other senses, leaving them more vulnerable to predation. This can significantly impact the ecosystems billions of people rely on for food and livelihoods.

We’re changing the chemistry of the ocean

The second biggest issue the ocean faces is overfishing. Seafood is a critical component of the diets of more than 3 billion people, but leading scientific projections show stocks of most ocean fish we currently target could be depleted by 2050.

To date, about 90% of all large, predatory fish, like cod, tuna, sharks and grouper, have been taken out of the ocean. We’ve also overfished small species like anchovies and sardines. Removing too many fish creates an imbalance in the food chain that can lead to the loss of other species. It also reduces the ocean’s ability to sequester carbon and fight climate change. 

We’ve eaten 90% of the big fish and many of the smaller ones, too

Bycatch is the term used to describe marine animals that are trapped in fishing gear even though they aren’t the target species being fished. Often, when commercial fisheries use nets and lines, a large amount of life is hauled up with the fish, including sea turtles, dolphins, seabirds and more. 

Because many of these species are illegal for commercial fishers to keep, they get tossed back into the ocean. In most cases, however, it’s unfortunately too little too late and the animals are either dead or dying when they are eventually returned to the sea.  

Other destructive fishing methods, including cyanide fishing, dynamite fishing and bottom trawling, destroy key marine habitats like coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangroves.

We’ve lost even more ocean life through bycatch and destructive fishing

The third biggest issue is pollution in the ocean. Ocean plastic gets a lot of attention, but there are even bigger pollution issues. One is eutrophication, which is an increase in nutrients in the water that causes excessive algae blooms and creates dead zones in the ocean. 

These zones are known as “hypoxic” areas, which means they are deprived of oxygen. They are formed most often as a result of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution from human activities like agriculture and livestock operations. 

Marine dead zones are primarily an issue in coastal waters including bays and gulfs, but they can affect the open ocean as well. When a hypoxic area is created, the fish and other life living in those waters either need to relocate or perish. 

Dead zones can also pose a threat to humans and land animals, as the algae and other toxins can contaminate drinking water.

Our coastal runoff pollution is causing huge dead zones

Marine debris is the term used to describe rubbish that’s entered the ocean due to poor waste management practices. 

Plastics make up about 80% of ocean litter, which threatens the health not only of marine life, but also of the human communities that rely on the sea for their food and livelihoods.

Because of its scale, the marine debris issue has been incredibly difficult to tackle. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, located between California and Hawaii, has the largest known accumulation of marine debris. It’s an area that’s about 1.6 million square kilometers, which is about twice the size of Texas. However, floating plastic only represents about 1% of the issue. The whereabouts of the other 99% of plastic pollution are largely unknown, as much of it is in the form of microplastic fibers and particles.

We’ve used the ocean as a giant rubbish dump

What's being done to save the ocean?

What have we gone and done to the ocean?

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 14 is to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development." This goal laid the framework for action needed to protect the ocean, especially against unsustainable fishing and pollution. Government intervention is key to solving ocean issues due to the overwhelming scale and resources needed to tackle them. 

The targets of SDG 14 were agreed upon by all UN member states, and actions range from eliminating fishing subsidies to reducing marine debris. The key now is to ensure SDG 14 is prioritized by governments, and popular mainstream support for action is key to achieving this.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG 14)

With the right support, it is amazing what can be achieved — the ocean is incredible at bouncing back when it is given a chance. As an example, after Humpback whale hunting was banned, thanks to pressure from ocean conservation organizations, populations rapidly bounced back to over 60% of their pre-hunting levels.

The challenge conservation organizations are facing is the scale of ocean issues. Ocean conservation only attracts about 0.2% of all charitable giving, so orgaizations are limited in what they can achieve. With such limited resources, organizations often have to prioritize issues capable of attracting funding rather than those that are the most important. 

There are plenty of ocean conservation organizations doing great work.

Over 50 countries have agreed to increase ocean protection, signing onto initiatives such as protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030 and protecting the high seas through an international treaty. 

Other than climate action, targeted marine protection is considered the single best way to improve the health of the ocean. This is because it protects the ocean from other stressors, like overfishing and pollution, until global temperatures can be stabilized. Again, popular mainstream support for ocean protection is key to not just the establishment of marine protected areas, but also to ensuring the protection is effective.

Governments around the world are increasing support for ocean protection legislation.

In total, the ocean holds over 1.35 billion, trillion liters of water and in every drop there’s about a million microscopic organisms. That’s a lot of water and an awful lot of life. Over 80% of the ocean floor has yet to be mapped, but based on estimates of what we have explored, the average depth of the ocean is 3.7 kilometers, or about 2.3 miles. The deepest known point in the ocean is deeper than the highest point on land (Mt. Everest), at about 11 kilometers (6.8 miles) deep.

The ocean is really, really big.

Over recent years, there has been increasing interest in ocean exploration. The discoveries being made are the stuff of science fiction novels. From sulfur-based life forms in superheated water on hydrothermal vents, to underwater 'lakes' with their own shorelines and tides, to the oldest animals on the planet, there's no shortage of bizarre discoveries being made in the ocean.

The ocean is the place to go for bizarre discoveries.

There are a number of similarities between the ocean and the human body. For example, currents pump heat, nutrients and oxygen through the ocean as veins do in humans. Additionally, both need to operate at a constant average pH level and temperature. A change of just 1 degree Celsius in the average temperature of the ocean causes major issues, similar to how a few degrees Fahrenheit sparks a fever in humans that can be life threatening if the temperature doesn’t go down. If temperatures fluctuate too abnormally, systems start shutting down, whether they’re coral reefs or organs like the lungs and heart.

The ocean is strangely familiar when you get to know it.

You don’t need to know much more about the ocean…

…but we think you might like to.

Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO

Imagery provided by Ocean Image Bank photographers: Alex Mustard, Cinzia Osele Bismarck, Fabrice Dudenhofer, Hannes Klostermann, Single Fin Photo, Thomas Horig and Yen-Yi Lee.

Photo art provided by Adobe Gen Create artists: Aanish Peshave, Egzon Muliiqi, Hansruedi Ransauer, Haruki Tominaga, Justin Peters, Kelly Malka, Kemi Schneider, Keronix Raze, Martijn Schrijver, Solaja Abigail Oluwakemi, and Tim Helou. 

A toolkit to help raise awareness of the fundamental importance of the ocean to life on Earth, and help inspire ocean protection.