EMSEA 2025 Considers the Future of Ocean Literacy

NMEA’s younger cousin across the pond, the European Marine Science Educators Association (EMSEA), used its 12^th Annual Conference this past September in Ostend, Belgium to lay the groundwork for the future of Ocean Literacy. I had the pleasure of representing NMEA at the conference. In keeping with the increasing isolationism of the United States, and possibly as the result of terminated grants, I was the only American participant.

Last year in Zadar, Croatia, EMSEA celebrated the 20^th Anniversary of the Ocean Literacy movement that began with the publication of the Ocean Literacy Guide in the United States. This year represents the halfway point in the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. Grounded in the reflection of twenty years of Ocean Literacy and five years of the Decade, it was particularly meaningful for me to be able to moderate the opening keynote panel, “The Future of Ocean Literacy,” and then to co-present the closing plenary workshop, “Refining the Ocean Literacy Principles.”

These two conference events represent two different but interrelated aspects of our community’s nascent vision for expanding the breadth, depth and impact of Ocean Literacy. The opening panel suggested ambitious ways to expand our work well beyond the field of education into a wide range of other social, economic and cultural sectors. The closing workshop represented a call to researchers and practitioners to come to agreement about an expanded theoretical framework that will increase our efficacy in advancing Ocean Literacy and guide our ability to understand and measure levels of Ocean Literacy worldwide.

First, a little context. EMSEA conferences are a bit different from NMEA’s. EMSEA speakers and workshops cover a wide range of topics that extend well beyond formal and informal marine education. They span ocean policy and governance, the blue economy, workforce issues, marine and maritime culture, ocean sports and recreation, ocean communications, and of course, climate change, but don’t often address economic, racial or linguistic justice issues. Most of EMSEA takes place in one room in plenary sessions. There might be a half day of concurrent workshops, usually including an Open Space session where participants propose in real time and participate in discussions of their choosing. NMEA, with dozens of concurrent sessions spread out over multiple days, is built for “choose-your-own-adventure.” At EMSEA, it’s like we all climb on the same bus, go on a multiday journey, and craft a narrative built from our common experiences. It’s as much like taking an intensive a 3-day course together as it is like going to a conference. The NMEA and EMSEA cousins share some commonalities, too. Both have field trips, a festive banquet with an auction, coffee breaks (where most of the action happens) and a warm, spirited, welcoming professional community that promotes collaboration and field building.

The Future of Ocean Literacy Panel brought together four of the EMSEA community’s most prominent Ocean Literacy leaders. Jan Seys is the Head of Communications at VLIZ/Flanders Marine Institute and is one of Europe’s leading ocean communicators. He has been at the forefront of the Ocean Literacy movement since 2012, when he was one of the hosts and organizers of The First Conference on Ocean Literacy in Europe. He has played an essential role in shaping how Europeans understand and communicate about the ocean. Dina Eparkhina is the Team Leader for EuroGOOS, the European Global Ocean Observing System. She was instrumental in ensuring that Ocean Literacy remains a top priority in the EuroGOOS strategic plan. From her influential position in a large science agency, she is a thought leader on the role of Ocean Literacy in redefining the relationship between science and society. She is one of Europe’s Ocean Literacy pioneers. Emma McKinley is a Senior Researcher at Cardiff University. She is an Ocean Literacy researcher and thought leader, possibly the most influential and well-published in Europe. Her work invites us to think deeply, based on research evidence, about what it truly means to be ocean literate. Freyja Thomson-Alberts is the Ocean Engagement Manager at Ocean Conservation Trust and is becoming an important voice for ensuring that the healing properties of the ocean are available for people who historically have not had equitable access to them.

Jan described the results of a small survey of experts that painted two starkly different futures for Ocean Literacy and for the ocean itself. Some respondents called for the community to take full advantage of the remaining years of the UN Decade and predicted that by 2030, OL in Europe will be fully integrated into school curricula and public policy, supported by a thriving global network of Blue Schools. They predicted that more ocean scientists will engage in outreach and collaboration with diverse communities and that OL will be deeply embedded in European culture and governance, resulting in sustainable, evidence-based stewardship. Other respondents predicted a grim future: Ocean Literacy efforts decline with the end of the Decade and populist and far-right trends threaten recent gains, especially if the OL community is not more successful at addressing climate change and environmental justice. They worry that the world has lost its connection to nature and ocean knowledge and ocean literacy are not priorities even for coastal countries, much less inland ones. Jan chose to speak of a hopeful future but warned that we need to redouble our efforts to avoid the grim concerns of the pessimists. He recommended that every country should celebrate at least one large scale national Ocean Festival each year to engage the public through ocean food, recreation, stand-up comedy, art and science.

Dina spun out a vision for how Ocean Literacy could be used as a tool for reshaping the relationship between science and society. Ocean science has historically been guided and conducted by a few highly trained experts, and the results of ocean science have traveled in one direction: from scientists to the public, the latter of whom are then expected to accept the results and apply them to their communities. Ocean Literacy provides a different model for this relationship. Ocean Literacy represents an understanding of the ocean that is held by all members of society. Priorities are not merely created by experts, but rather a dialogue between scientists and communities. Dina called for Ocean Literacy to move beyond educating the public, and to rise to the role of connecting many sectors of society and embedding community engagement at the heart of scientific institutions. This will require, she says, that scientists stop talking for long enough to listen to communities about what they care about and need. Ocean science should be about supporting communities, not managing or directing them.

When the Ocean Literacy Framework was published 21 years ago, we identified three “dimensions” of Ocean Literacy: knowledge (understanding the Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts), communication (ability to engage in meaningful discourse about the ocean), and behavior (ability to make informed, responsible decisions about the ocean). In 2023, Emma published a paper proposing seven additional dimensions of Ocean Literacy: attitudes, activism, awareness, emotion, access and experience, adaptive capacity, trust and transparency. Other researchers, like EMSEA co-founder, Géraldine Fauville, propose combining or eliminating some of those, and suggest the addition of ocean connectedness. While there is not yet a consensus, Emma strives to develop a deeper, more complex understanding of how we describe an ocean literate person or society. In her presentation, she described the development of a National Ocean Literacy Strategy in Wales (Y Mor a Ni). Emma and others conducted a series of workshops with over 200 marine and coastal practitioners to arrive at a consensus strategy that addresses all the dimensions and complexity of Ocean Literacy. Using the work in Wales as a model, England and the UK are now undertaking a co-design process to develop their own national ocean literacy strategies. Emma’s vision for the future of Ocean Literacy is for every country to have their own co-designed, community-driven National Ocean Literacy Strategy.

Freyja sees Ocean Literacy expanding in the future beyond education into the realm of addressing mental and physical health. She is an advocate of Blue Mind Theory and the work of Dr. Wallace J. Nichols, who described the restorative benefits of being in or around the ocean. Freyja has established a Blue Mind Hub at the Ocean Conservation Trust (OCT) that works closely with social prescribers, psychiatrists, mental health workers, and general practitioners who write Blue Mind prescriptions for patients with mental health challenges and refer them to OCT for Blue Mind activities. Freyja’s team takes them snorkeling, walking along the coast or boating to improve their well-being. The program is new and small, but the results so far have been remarkable and comparable to the movement in the US by pediatricians to write “Park Prescriptions” for kids with ADHD, hypertension, depression, anxiety, or too much screen time. For Ocean Literacy to thrive beyond the end of the UN Decade of Ocean Science, Freyja has this advice for those inside the Ocean Literacy community: “Be brave! Reach out to communities and sectors you don’t know. Those people want to talk with you, they just don’t know it yet.”

The opening panel was followed by three days of rapid-fire sessions, discussion-filled coffee breaks, exquisite mussels, perfect Belgian chocolate, and an occasional perfect Belgian beer. The days were packed with aspirational suggestions about how to expand the scope and impact of Ocean Literacy. By the afternoon of the last day, the pumps were primed for a generative final four-hour plenary workshop on “Refining the Ocean Literacy Principles.”

The original Ocean Literacy Guide, published in 2005 and revised twice since, presents the definition of Ocean Literacy, including the tagline (“understanding the ocean’s influence on you and your influence on the ocean”), the three dimensions (knowledge, communication, behavior), the seven Essential Principles, and the 45 Fundamental Concepts. Over the next dozen or so years, we added the Ocean Literacy Scope and Sequence for Grades K-12, The Alignment of Ocean Literacy to the Next Generation Science Standards, and The International Ocean Literacy Survey. This work now guides much of the development of our marine science instructional materials, museum and aquarium exhibits, and educational programs, but was only intended to elaborate on the first dimension of Ocean Literacy: knowledge about the ocean. Caroline Brennan, Emma McKinley, Géraldine Fauville, and their colleagues proposed several additional dimensions, and questions have arisen about whether we need to revise the principles and concepts (they are 20 years old, after all!), or if we need a separate, similar set of documents to elaborate the other dimensions. The workshop (led by Emma McKinley; Nicola Bridge, Ocean Conservation Trust and Past Chair of EMSEA; Evy Copejans, Co-Founder and Managing Director of EMSEA; and myself) dove into this uncharted territory.

We began by asking participants to quickly and extemporaneously complete the sentence, “An ocean literate person…” We used Slido, a live meeting assistant program, so that all contributions were immediately public and visible on the screen at the front of the room. The results were nuanced, insightful, moving, and often surprising. We have not yet sifted through the outputs (stay tuned!), so I don’t have the results to share in this piece, but two responses stood out for me:

The former statement started a short, incisive discussion about the importance of the idea that there is only one ocean, one huge, interconnected body of water, that all people and all living things share and depend on. This led several people to comment that Principle 1 has been the most difficult for many people in Europe to embrace. Many Europeans identify strongly with their regional sea (Baltic, North, Mediterranean, Black, etc.) and not so much with “the ocean.” EMSEA, like NMEA, has regional chapters and they are all organized around a sea. Connecting this regional affinity and identity to a larger, shared, global identity has been a challenge and an area of growth for European marine educators and communicators.

The latter statement quieted the room. When it appeared on the screen there was a sudden pause and the group chatter was replaced after a moment with soft exhales and utterances, “hmmmmm,” “ooohh, yes,” “who said that?” and “aaaah, that’s beautiful.” Again, we acknowledged the importance of identity, that every person establishes their own, and that perhaps our highest aspiration is for more people to simply feel like they are “ocean people.”

After some brief historical and forward-looking framing and level-setting by each of the workshop leaders, our next task was to reflect on the existing Ocean Literacy Principles and Concepts. Seven sheets of chart paper were arranged around the room, each with one principle and a QR code to its accompanying concepts. Participants circulated around the room with sticky notes, adding their reflections, questions and suggestions about each, followed by a group discussion.

Participants had thoughtful comments and reflections about the existing Principles and Concepts, but there seemed to emerge a consensus that they are actually fine, they work, the science is still accurate, they have been extraordinarily useful in Europe, translated into several languages and adapted for regional seas (similar to Great Lakes Literacy in the US), and there is no urgent need to revise or add to them. Several people expressed that what is really needed is the equivalent of Principles and Concepts for the other Dimensions. We need a community-wide common language and common understanding of each dimension to make them as useful and actionable as the knowledge dimension has been. This led us to the heart of the workshop.

Small groups each chose one of the dimensions to further develop. They discussed and wrote notes about the following prompts, then repeated the process for a second dimension:

The input we generated about the dimensions was substantive and thoughtful. Once we have it transcribed and analyzed, I’m certain it will inform a thorough and cohesive co-design process. The process will require a far more professionally, culturally, racially and geographically diverse set of co-designers to develop consensus frameworks and tools to guide research and program development. To develop tools related to, for example, ocean emotion, ocean connectedness, or ocean activism, we will no doubt need guidance from environmental psychologists and researchers with deep expertise about each of those topics, and members of different cultures to ensure we avoid the traps that arise from our respective assumptions, biases, and blind spots.

Before the elaboration of each dimension can even begin, it would be helpful for the Ocean Literacy research and practitioner communities to come to agreement about how many dimensions to include. Researchers might prefer splitting into many dimensions, which might lend itself to focused, highly specific studies. Practitioners might prefer lumping into fewer dimensions to drive the design of more holistic learning experiences. For example, is activism an aspect of behavior, as Fauville’s seven dimensions imply, or are there enough important distinctions to separate them, as in McKinley’s ten dimensions? Others question whether extrinsic elements, such as access/experience, and trust/transparency should be included in the model—they typically have not been in other frameworks, such as environmental literacy and science literacy. There is potentially some healthy tension to resolve between the goal of being as nuanced, rigorous and comprehensive as possible and the competing goal of wanting policy makers, community members and program designers to not be so overwhelmed by the complexity of the tools that they are not able to use them.

The workshop uncovered uncertainties about establishing which dimensions to explore and how to embark on the lengthy co-design process to explore them. It also amplified the inescapable truth that as our community and our work grow ever more sophisticated and complex, so does the need for more sophisticated and complex tools. It took a dozen years to adequately describe the knowledge dimension of Ocean Literacy, but we know more and have better technology available now. We have our work cut out for us. The field is inevitably advancing and progressing, and as we’ve always done, we will advance too, working together in deep collaboration.

The first round of Ocean Literacy framework development took place in United States, but that is ancient history. Our colleagues in Europe (and Asia) are reminding us that we can’t stop now. It will take all of us this time, on many continents, in indigenous communities and communities of color, in the global South and global North, to take our work to the level required by these crazy, dangerous times.

There really is only one ocean.

Thanks to EMSEA for initiating the next wave of the Future of Ocean Literacy.