Back to previous page    Language

Blue Marine Foundation, when protecting the ocean means enforcing the rules

Blue Marine Foundation protects ocean life through science, projects and legal action. In Europe, the new focus is marine protected areas

Marine protected areas must work beyond the map. Blue Marine is pushing for effective enforcement of Europe’s existing conservation laws

Protecting the sea is not simply a matter of drawing a boundary on a nautical chart and calling the area protected. For Blue Marine Foundation, the decisive question comes afterwards: what actually happens within those boundaries, and are the habitats and species receiving the protection for which the area was created?

It is one of the issues currently shaping the organisation’s work in Europe, where marine conservation is increasingly moving from commitments and designations towards the practical enforcement of existing rules. It is a transition with direct relevance for the Mediterranean too.

Blue Marine, bringing life back to the ocean

Founded in 2010, Blue Marine Foundation has built its work around a clear objective: helping restore ocean health, with a particular focus on tackling overfishing and the loss of marine habitats.

Its stated mission is to achieve the effective protection of at least 30% of the ocean by 2030 while supporting sustainable management across the rest of the marine environment. Its work includes creating and managing marine protected areas, supporting low-impact fisheries, restoring ecosystems and influencing the policies that govern how the ocean is used.

The approach is deliberately multidisciplinary. Alongside conservation projects, Blue Marine has specialist teams working in science, economics, climate, investigations, education, media, policy and law. Its Blue Legal team challenges cases in which the organisation believes laws protecting the marine environment are not being properly respected.

A Mediterranean undergoing profound change

The Mediterranean is one of Blue Marine’s priority regions. Covering more than 2.5 million square kilometres, it supports exceptional biodiversity, with around 17,000 marine species and a significant proportion found nowhere else.

It is also an ecosystem under considerable pressure. Blue Marine identifies overfishing, declining apex predators, the spread of non-native species and rapidly warming waters among the challenges facing the region. Its Mediterranean work therefore includes creating and expanding marine protected areas and safeguarding vulnerable habitats.

For those who navigate the Mediterranean, the health of the sea is far from an abstract environmental issue. Seabeds, biodiversity, water quality and thriving coastlines are part of what transforms a bay, an island or a stretch of coast from a position on a chart into a destination worth reaching.

When a protected area risks existing only on paper

The meaning of the word protected lies at the heart of one of Europe’s newest conservation campaigns.

According to the organisations that form the new MPA Legal Coalition, activities capable of damaging habitats and species are still permitted in a number of European areas formally designated for conservation. One of the main practices under scrutiny is bottom trawling, which involves towing fishing gear across the seabed.

The question is particularly relevant within marine sites belonging to the Natura 2000 network. The Coalition argues that Europe’s central problem is not necessarily a lack of environmental legislation, but its implementation. Under the framework of the Habitats Directive, activities that may affect protected sites should be assessed for their compatibility with the site’s conservation objectives.

Eleven organisations, one European strategy

The MPA Legal Coalition brings together 11 European environmental organisations: Blue Marine Foundation, BUND, ClientEarth, Danmarks Naturfredningsforening, Défense des Milieux Aquatiques, Doggerland, DUH, Environmental Justice Foundation, Manche Nature, Oceana and Seas At Risk.

Its aim is to connect national legal action within a coordinated European strategy. According to the Coalition, litigation is not intended to replace policymaking but to ensure that laws and policies already adopted are actually implemented.

The issue has added significance because the European Union has committed to effectively protecting at least 30% of its seas by 2030. Yet surface area alone provides an incomplete picture: an MPA can contribute meaningfully to biodiversity only when conservation objectives, management measures, monitoring and enforcement are in place.

Italy, Spain and France among the countries concerned

The debate has a direct Mediterranean dimension. Coalition members have submitted legal complaints concerning Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, arguing that bottom trawling and other potentially damaging fishing activities continue within marine Natura 2000 sites.

The inclusion of Italy, France and Spain makes the issue particularly significant for the Mediterranean. The Environmental Justice Foundation, for example, states in reporting on its legal work that bottom trawling occurs in 44% of Italy’s marine Natura 2000 sites, based on the evidence used by the organisation in its case.

This does not automatically imply that all fishing should disappear from every protected area. The Coalition’s own position distinguishes between activities that undermine conservation objectives and fishing methods that may be allowed where independent, science-based assessments demonstrate that they are compatible with the habitats and species being protected.

Court decisions that may influence what comes next

The strategy is already being tested. Decisions concerning the protected Dogger Bank in the Netherlands and the Banc des Flandres in France have reinforced the principle that designating a marine protected area must be accompanied by management capable of delivering its conservation objectives.

For the MPA Legal Coalition, these cases reach beyond individual sites. Much of the underlying legislation is shared across EU Member States, meaning a judgment in one country may help clarify what effective marine protection should look like elsewhere in Europe.

Protecting 30%, but making that protection real

The discussion raised by Blue Marine and its partners therefore shifts attention from the quantity of protected sea to the quality of that protection.

The ocean can be divided into percentages, zones and legal jurisdictions. Marine ecosystems cannot. Species, currents and habitats cross national boundaries, making clear conservation objectives, scientific assessment, monitoring and enforceable rules essential to a credible system of marine protection.

It also offers another way of thinking about the Mediterranean’s future. Protecting the sea does not necessarily mean making it inaccessible. It means finding a credible balance between the communities that depend on it, the people who navigate it and the natural systems that allow it to remain alive.

For yachting, a world inseparable from the quality of coastal and marine environments, that distinction is far from theoretical. Part of the value of every Mediterranean route lies in the richness of the sea through which it passes.

__
Blue Marine Foundation

21 August 2026
© MED Yachting Editorial Team
Blue Marine Foundation, when protecting the ocean means enforcing the rules
__
The information in this article has been sourced from and adapted from official sources and/or press releases, in accordance with our editorial code of ethics.