In five weeks, the world’s largest ocean-protection conference opens in Mombasa.
Most divers will not be there. Most readers of this site will not be there. The reason it matters anyway is that the conferences like this one are where the marine protected areas that shape the dives we get to do five years from now are actually announced. The MPAs at Malpelo, Tayrona, Cabo Pulmo, the Hope Spots in Egypt and Rapa Nui, all of them passed through political moments very similar to the one that will happen in Mombasa from 16 to 18 June.
I want to write about why I am paying attention to it, and what I think divers, the people whose lives are organised around the ocean’s specific places, should be watching for.
What Our Ocean Is, Briefly
The Our Ocean Conference was founded in 2014 by the United States, designed as a forum where governments, organisations, and businesses make voluntary commitments on ocean protection. Eleven years and more than 2,900 commitments worth over US$169 billion later, it has become the central annual moment for tracking what the world is and is not doing for the sea.
The 11th conference, OOC11, runs from 16 to 18 June 2026 in Mombasa and Kilifi on Kenya’s Swahili Coast. The theme is Our Ocean, Our Heritage, Our Future. It is the first time the conference has been held on African soil, which is itself significant: the Western Indian Ocean is one of the world’s most important and most under-protected marine regions.
What’s at Stake This Year
Three things make OOC11 different from the conferences that came before it.
The High Seas Treaty just came into force. The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement, more commonly called the High Seas Treaty, formally entered into force in January 2026. The treaty creates the legal mechanism for designating marine protected areas in international waters, the two-thirds of the ocean that has historically had almost no protection. Mombasa is the first Our Ocean Conference held in the BBNJ era. The early implementation choices made there will shape how the treaty actually works at sea. I have written about why this treaty matters, and the next five weeks are the moment for governments to translate paper into perimeter.
30 by 30 is now a four-year deadline. The 2022 Kunming-Montreal commitment to protect 30 percent of land and ocean by 2030 sounded ambitious in 2022 and now sounds tight. As of mid-2026, roughly 8 percent of the ocean is formally protected and only a fraction of that is fully protected. Mombasa is the last big Our Ocean Conference where countries have meaningful runway to add new MPAs and have them established before the deadline. After this conference, the political window narrows quickly.
Africa is hosting, and the West Indian Ocean is at the centre. The Western Indian Ocean covers some of the most biologically important waters on the planet, the Mozambique Channel manta aggregations, the Aldabra Atoll, the East African coral coastline. It has historically been under-represented in international conservation conversations. Hosting in Mombasa is meant to change that, and the host-nation politics around Our Ocean usually translate into the boldest commitments coming from the host. Kenya, alongside its East African neighbours, is the country to watch.
What Divers Should Be Watching For
If you read these announcements as a diver rather than as a policy professional, the questions that matter are practical. I will be looking for the following.
New large-scale MPAs in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Panama have built a corridor of protected waters around Cocos, the Galápagos, and Malpelo that is one of the world’s great pelagic conservation success stories. Expansion or stronger enforcement commitments around this corridor would be a real result. After my own time at Malpelo in October 2024, where we logged a sighting of orcas no one had ever recorded at the sanctuary before, my view is that the corridor is biologically far richer than its current protection reflects.
A serious commitment on the Egyptian Red Sea. The Great Fringing Reef Hope Spot announcement in late 2025 created a framework for full government protection. Mombasa is the natural moment for Egypt to announce concrete enforcement timelines. The reefs I dived for forty-five days off Hurghada last year showed beautiful coral architecture and a missing food chain. Whether the Hope Spot translates into real protection at sea will determine whether the next generation of divers there sees what I saw or something better.
Pacific Colombia hammerhead protection. Recent research has documented that smalltooth sand tiger sharks at Malpelo and the scalloped hammerheads of the Eastern Pacific show low long-distance migration, which means strict no-take zones in their core habitat would have outsized impact. Colombia announcing additional protections in the Pacific would be one of the most measurable conservation wins from the conference.
Implementation, not announcements. Marine Conservation Institute’s analysis of the 2025 UN Ocean Conference found that many announced MPAs lacked enforcement or contained zones where extractive activity continues. OOC11 is bringing in a strengthened architecture for tracking delivery on past commitments, which sounds technical but is the most consequential structural change at this conference. A new MPA on paper without enforcement is not protection. A working community of fisher-rangers protecting a real perimeter, like the one running Cabo Pulmo, is.
Why Divers Specifically Should Care
Most political processes feel abstract. This one does not, if you dive.
Every dive trip I have taken since I started has happened in waters that are either protected, partially protected, or unprotected, and the difference shows up immediately on the reef. Tayrona in Santa Marta holds protections that have kept the inshore reefs as healthy as they are. Malpelo, even now, runs largely on the strength of its sanctuary status and the people who police it. The Hurghada coast was developed before any meaningful protection was in place, and the diving there shows the cost. The Egyptian Red Sea Hope Spot is the first attempt to reverse that.
Where you spend your dive money matters. Choosing operators that work inside protected waters, and operators that run real conservation programmes, is the practical contribution most of us can make to the question Mombasa is convening to ask. DivingLife on the Sea Wolf at Malpelo is one of the operators where you feel that connection in the briefings. Pranamaya in Mexico, the freediving school where I trained, is another. The choice of dive shop is a small political act and over years it adds up.
What I Will Be Watching For Personally
Two things.
The first is whether Colombia, my country, makes the Pacific commitments that the corridor needs. The orca sighting at Malpelo in October 2024 was a moment of biological grace that the Sanctuary’s protections made possible. Building outward from that sanctuary into the wider Pacific is one of the few conservation moves that would meaningfully change the future of diving in the Eastern Pacific.
The second is whether the host nation, Kenya, uses the platform for something genuinely ambitious in the Western Indian Ocean. Hosting always raises the stakes. The world will be watching to see what Kenya brings.
Five weeks is enough time for plenty to be announced before the conference even opens. I will be following the official site and the Mission Blue feed, and I will write a follow-up after the conference. If you care about the ocean and the dive sites you have not yet been to, this is one to pay attention to.
