When the world’s first marine reserves were established in the 1920s, Jacques Cousteau was an adolescent. The deepest we could dive was about 500 ft. Humans were beginning to imagine what could be beneath the surface, what discoveries lay waiting, and what might deserve protecting.

Nearly a century later, we’ve made a lot of progress. The ocean is the center of the world economy, providing food, labor, transportation, tourism, and so much more. It has brought us promising treatments for disease, animal-inspired engineering and robotics, and even the basis for space exploration technology. Inspired by the U.N. Decade of Ocean Science—which launched a 10-year push for action in 2021—marine researchers, philanthropists, and political leaders worldwide aim to map the entire seafloor and identify 100,000 new species by 2030. And at the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC) earlier this month, the global community made progress on financial commitments for preservation, support for pausing deep-sea mining, expanding marine protected areas—with French Polynesia notably vowing to protect 900,000 square kilometers of sea—and on the High Seas Treaty to protect marine life in international waters.

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And yet, much remains to be discovered about our ocean and its role in sustaining all life on Earth—and much remains to be done to........

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