What the 11th Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa Means for the Western Indian Ocean

In June 2026, Mombasa hosted the 11th Our Ocean Conference; three days of scientific findings, government commitments, and community-led conservation models from across the world, gathered on the doorstep of the coastline Seas4Life has worked along for more than 25 years. Julie Church, our ocean educator, and Kira Evans, our foundation lead, attended on our behalf. This is what they came back with, and why it matters to anyone who wants to understand where ocean conservation is actually heading.

What is the Our Ocean Conference?

The Our Ocean Conference is a biennial gathering that began in 2014, built around six recurring themes: marine protected areas, climate change, sustainable fisheries, marine pollution, the ocean-climate nexus, and maritime security. Unlike many ocean events, it deliberately tracks its own promises in public — this year's conference reported 41% of past commitments complete and a further 41% in progress. For an organisation like Seas4Life, whose work depends on the health of a single stretch of coastline, it's one of the few places where science, government policy, and community practice are in the same room at the same time.

What did global leaders say about the state of the ocean?

The opening ceremony set a serious tone. Former US Secretary of State John Kerry, founder of the conference, argued that the ocean crisis is not a future risk still to be managed but that it is already underway. The ocean has absorbed most of the excess heat generated by climate change, more than a third of global fish stocks are harvested beyond sustainable limits, and close to half the world's coral reefs are already lost or degraded.

Kerry named five priorities that framed much of the week: enforcing the 30x30 protection target, moving the High Seas Treaty from signature to practice, intensifying the fight against illegal and unregulated fishing, increasing investment in blue carbon ecosystems like mangroves and seagrasses, and holding conferences like this one accountable to their own tracked commitments.

Kenya's own address reinforced the point outlining progress on mangrove restoration, fisheries reform, and ocean governance, alongside three direct requests to international partners: financing and enforcement support to help protect 30% of the ocean by 2030, investment that builds industry and restores ecosystems, and active partnership against illegal fishing, described as a direct threat to coastal communities and maritime security.

What is the 30x30 target, and how close are we?

30x30 refers to the global commitment to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030. It came up in nearly every session they attended, but one figure stayed with her: as of that week, there were less 1,600 days left to reach it. It's the number she's referenced most often since returning, because it reframes 30x30 from a policy conversation into a working timeline.

What's new in coral research?

The most substantial technical session of the week, for Kira, came from Reefolution Foundation Kenya, Reefolution Trust, and the University of Wageningen, presenting a decade of coral research at Shimoni, Wasini, and Mkwiro.

Their research updates the standard explanation of coral bleaching. The long-held model was that heat causes a coral's algal symbionts to overproduce, triggering bleaching. Newer findings suggest something more specific: under high heat, the coral's oxidative stress response fails, the algae stop photosynthesising, and the coral itself digests them. This may help explain rising disease rates under heat stress, distinct from bleaching alone as corals can survive roughly six weeks without their algal symbionts before the damage becomes permanent.

The response Reefolution is building around this is a four-part framework: Secure, Adapt, Restore, Conserve. Securing means cryopreserving the most vulnerable coral species. Adapting means selectively breeding heat-tolerant corals with heat-evolved algal symbionts, which has already shown colour recovery in some specimens. Restoring means out-planting those corals; Conserving means monitoring the reef systems long-term. Community involvement runs through all four stages, including a role Reefolution calls a "reef ranger" a trained restoration practitioner drawn from the local community, alongside alternative livelihoods training and octopus fishery closures. As one open question from the session put it: roughly 60% of regional reefs share the same algal symbiont species, while 40% may carry different ones, meaning each reef may have its own microbiome still to be properly mapped.

How are coastal communities leading ocean conservation?

Two sessions stood out for showing what community-led conservation actually looks like in practice.

The first was the formal launch of the WIO LMMA Alliance, a network of Locally Managed Marine Areas across the Western Indian Ocean, hosted by IUCN Madagascar. The session brought together government officials, indigenous community leaders, and fisheries representatives, and it mirrors the same community-governance model our own Foundation partnerships are built on: conservation led by the people who live alongside the ecosystem, not managed from a distance.

The second was the IUCN's five-year impact report on the Great Blue Wall, a regenerative seascape movement that began in the Western Indian Ocean and has since grown into a coalition spanning governments, scientists, indigenous peoples, and civil society. Its work in the Comoros–Madagascar corridor is a live opportunity for our expeditions to contribute to directly.

How is ocean conservation being funded?

A recurring theme, both in a dedicated blue finance session and in the earlier 1000 Ocean Startups Africa launch, was the gap between coastal communities already delivering measurable conservation outcomes and their ability to access the capital needed to scale that work. New mechanisms announced during the week including the Marine Biodiversity and Community Resilience Fund and the SWIO Venture Builder are designed to close that gap while strengthening, rather than replacing, community governance.

What does this mean for Seas4Life?

Four threads from the week connect directly to the work we do on the water and along the coast.

The Reefolution coral research gives us the clearest science yet on why some reefs recover from bleaching and others don't yet they sit inside the same coastline our expeditions and Foundation programs already call home. The WIO LMMA Alliance's community-governance model reflects the structure our Foundation partnerships are already built on, and connects us to a wider regional network to learn from. The Great Blue Wall's work in the Comoros-Madagascar corridor is a real opening for our expeditions to contribute to active conservation. And the decade of shark conservation work marked at the conference lines up directly with the shark seasons already at the centre of our expedition calendar in Kenya and Tanzania.

That's the arc this conference reinforced for us: wonder at what this ocean still holds, understanding built through decades of research like Reefolution's, and action carried out by the communities and scientists we work alongside every season. Fifteen hundred and ninety-some days now remain until 2030. It's a deadline already in motion. As one line from the opening ceremony put it, the ocean has been humanity's silent ally for generations, and it's now our turn to act on its behalf.