Corals and mangrove grow at the protected Bunaken Island marine national park in Manado, Indonesia. Photo by ROMEO GACAD/AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
For travelers who love visiting beaches and frolicking in oceans, a marine protected area is a wonderful destination. These places are like the national parks of the ocean, with beautiful water, healthy habitat and abundant fish.
The world currently has 16,950 marine protected areas, according to Protected Planet’s database. All told, they conserve 10% of our oceans, a milestone announced by the International Union for Conservation of Nature on April 1, 2026.
This milestone is worth celebrating, to be sure. But drawing lines on a map is just the beginning. If marine protected areas aren’t managed well, they don’t offer many real-world benefits. For instance, some marine protected areas allow activities like seabed mining or industrial fishing that damage ocean resources.
One way to pinpoint the world’s best marine protected areas is to see which have earned Blue Park Awards, presented annually by the Marine Conservation Institute. These awards recognize areas that demonstrate exceptional management, as well as strong regulations that safeguard wildlife.
"A marine protected area is only as good as its enforcement," said Sarah Hamid, Blue Parks Director at the Marine Conservation Institute in an online announcement of the 2026 award winners. "Blue Parks represent the absolute best examples we have for ocean conservation worldwide. These award-winning sites serve as models that need to be replicated all over the world.”
The 2026 Blue Park Awards were announced June 16 at the 11th Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa, Kenya. The winners are:
“This award belongs to everyone helping move the MPA forward—federal and provincial officials, indigenous partners, environmental organizations, harvesters, industry, and our coastal communities,” said Joanne Thompson, Canada’s Minister of Fisheries, in a virtual acceptance speech. “We do this work together, and we do it based on science and data.”
Just 2.5% of our oceans are highly protected with no-take marine reserves, according to the Marine Conservation Institute’s MPAtlas. And only about 1% of all marine protected areas were managed in a way that delivered meaningful conservation outcomes, according to a 2024 progress report from the United Nations Environment Program World Conservation Monitoring Centre.
High quality marine protected areas ban extractive activities and allow ecosystems to recover. They also have support from the people who live nearby, and engage local communities in the management of their marine resources.
Worldwide, many nations have committed to protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030. But quality matters as much as quantity when it comes to managing protected areas.
"Indigenous Peoples steward critical marine and coastal ecosystems that are crucially important to safeguarding our oceans, alongside formally designated protected areas," said Grethel Aguilar, Director General of the IUCN, in the April press release. "Together, we have the skills, knowledge and partnerships to equitably and meaningfully conserve 30% of the Earth by 2030.”
Several Pacific island nations are leading the way on creating high quality marine protected areas. Three countries created landmark ocean protections in 2025:
While we’ve protected 10% of the ocean, most marine protected areas are along coastlines. Only 1.66% of the high seas are currently protected, in part because the deep sea is beyond national jurisdiction.
The UN High Seas Treaty, which entered into force in January 2026, aims to change this. It’s the first international agreement dedicated to safeguarding biodiversity in international waters. The treaty provides a way to establish marine protected areas in the high seas.
"We’re at a truly critical moment for people to repair our relationship to the ocean," said Lance Morgan, president of the Marine Conservation Institute in last week’s awards’ announcement. "Without protecting these really important places of biodiversity, we're not going to be able to recover the former abundance of ocean health."
As momentum builds to reach the global 30-by-30 conservation target, the next phase of ocean protection will require more than simply drawing lines on a map. We must also ensure marine protected areas are adequately funded, effectively managed and championed by the oceanside communities that depend on them.
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