Ocean Conservancy
Description
Ocean Conservancy is a U.S.-based nonprofit that works globally to protect the ocean and the life it supports.
It works on protecting biodiversity, advancing climate solutions and preventing ocean plastic pollution, through scientific research, policy advocacy and public outreach. It organizes the International Coastal Cleanup, which has mobilized millions of volunteers worldwide to remove hundreds of millions of pounds of trash from beaches and waterways since 1986. It has also run programs to protect marine mammals, sea turtles and coral reefs, and to end commercial whaling.
Founded in 1972 in Washington, D.C. as the Delta Corporation, the organization was later known as the Center for Environmental Education and the Center for Marine Conservation before taking its current name in 2001. It helped secure the 1996 rewrite of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the primary U.S. fisheries law, and has pushed for legislation such as the Save Our Seas Act and California’s Plastic Pollution Producer Responsibility Act.
The organization also runs a Trash Free Seas Alliance with corporate and nonprofit partners to research and address marine debris, and maintains a global database on ocean plastics.
Latest news
The Mysteries of the Mariana Trench
Our ocean is an incredibly vast and mysterious place. And there is no place where that is more evident than the deepest ocean area in the world: the legendary Mariana Trench. Located east of the Philippines, the Mariana Trench lies in the Mariana Archipelago in the western portion of the North...
24 Sep 2026
The Ocean is Changing—Here’s What We Can Do About It
Our ocean has absorbed more than 90% of excess heat caused by human-driven climate change and a quarter of the carbon dioxide we emit. In simple terms: The ocean has been quietly protecting us from the worst impacts of a warming planet. But that protection comes at a high cost. In “Ocean...
22 Sep 2026
The Annual Migration to Clean Up Our Coasts
Annually, seasonally and sometimes even daily, amazing oceanic migrations are taking place. Humpback whales migrate thousands of miles to breeding grounds each year, while every night trillions of plankton, fish and squid move from the depths of the ocean towards the surface to feed. There are...
4 Sep 2026
Did you know some female sea turtles can travel hundreds—or even thousands—of miles through open ocean before returning to nest on or near the very beaches where they hatched? In fact, Leatherback sea turtles take this long-distance travel to an extraordinary level. Pacific leatherbacks nesting...
27 Aug 2026
Storytelling is one of our oldest human behaviors. Across every culture and continent, people have used stories to share values, pass down knowledge and make sense of the world around them. The tales that survive, retold across generations, kept alive through memory and ceremony, aren’t...
21 Aug 2026
What do you think about when you hear the words “microplastic pollution?” Your mind may immediately go to imagery of colorful fragmented plastics broken off from bottles, buckets and other items we use in our everyday lives. Or, perhaps, you imagine a pile of microplastic fibers—the tiny...
31 Jul 2026
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