In the sunny southeastern coast of Kenya, one of the ocean world’s most important annual gatherings has once again brought together scientists, policymakers, and conservationists from across the globe.

For Max Bello, a marine policy expert who has spent years pushing for stronger ocean protections, the 11th edition of Our Ocean Conference represented something more than a meeting. It was, he believes, a moment of reckoning, and of cautious hope.

“The ocean is the house of life on this planet,” Bello said from Mombasa. “This is where we come from. And we need to protect this place.”

Our Ocean is a unique fixture in the conservation calendar. Unlike the formal machinery of UN conventions, it operates outside that circuit entirely, yet it has earned a reputation as one of the most consequential gatherings of the year for those working to safeguard marine environments.

At the heart of this year’s discussions was a target that has become a rallying point for ocean advocates worldwide: 30×30 – the commitment, enshrined under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, to protect 30 percent of both land and ocean by 2030.

The world, Bello acknowledges, is falling short.

“We are behind,” he said. “We’re still at 10 percent, and only a very small portion of that is actually good quality.”

That distinction matters enormously to researchers and campaigners. A marine protected area exists on paper long before it exists in practice. Designating a zone, Bello argues, is only the beginning. What counts is enforcement — keeping extraction out, maintaining boundaries, and ensuring that protection means something real for the ecosystems within.

“It’s not just about creating spaces to continue doing the same,” he said. “It is to protect them, to maintain extraction out of those boundaries. It’s not easy.”

Across Africa in particular, momentum appears to be building. Multiple organisations have been working alongside governments on the continent to translate the 30×30 ambition into action, and Bello described a sense of movement that felt, to those gathered in Mombasa, genuinely encouraging.

“There are a lot of grim and a lot of sad things that we’re seeing around the world,” Bello said. “But there is also some good news coming from these meetings, there is hope. And that’s where we need to focus our energies.”

For Bello, the ocean is not a peripheral concern. It is the central one. Protecting it, he insists, is not an act of environmentalism separate from human interests, it is an investment in humanity itself.

“What we can do for the ocean,” he said, “is exactly what we need to do for ourselves.”