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Day 1 of the OceanX Summit showed what exploration, storytelling, immersive experiences, and AI can reveal about the ocean. Day 2 asked what it takes to turn that momentum into lasting conservation and a more sustainable blue economy: partnerships that move discoveries into action.
How does a global agreement become action at sea? OceanX Co-CEO and Chief Science Officer Vincent Pieribone and National University of Singapore Professor Peter Ng opened Day 2 with a look at Monsoon Rise, the first joint OceanX–Singapore expedition held in the spirit of the BBNJ Agreement.
For Pieribone, the high seas treaty raises a question of access: “If it's going to be made available, it should be made available more equally across the world, not just the ones who can go in quickest and grab it,” he said. Ng stressed that finding biodiversity is only the start. The next step is helping countries identify areas that deserve protection and follow through. With Singapore’s universities ready to work alongside OceanX, he called this “a golden period for the high seas around this region.”
How does an ocean agenda become action? Moderated by Tamara Singh of The Nature Conservancy, Barkha Mossaë, Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance Executive Director Karen Sack, and Minderoo’s OceanOmics Ecosystem Intelligence Director Michael Bunce tackled the question through policy, finance, and science.
Mossaë described the tension of this moment: the BBNJ Agreement offers reason to celebrate, while funding cuts and geopolitics put pressure on the institutions needed to deliver change. Sack pointed to a gap in ocean finance: coastal projects can outgrow grants before they are large enough to attract investors. For communities in the Global South, she warned, there may be only one chance to get a project right.
Bunce argued that collecting data is only part of the job. His team is working with OceanX to make environmental DNA findings understandable and useful to communities. As he put it, “Every single sample that someone takes can discover biodiversity and that biodiversity can make a difference.”
The path forward is shared: evidence people can use, finance that fits the communities taking the risk, and policy that turns both into action.
What happens when scientists see parts of the ocean no one has seen before? In “Stories from the Deep,” journalist Claire Turrell spoke with Indonesia’s Dr. Marina Frederick, Malaysia’s Dr. Maizah M. Abdullah, and deep-sea biologist Dr. Diva Amon about discoveries that changed what their teams know—and what they can do next.
Frederick’s team mapped seven connected seamount features, including the newly named Masadada Seamount. Their work supports tsunami readiness and trains the next generation of marine scientists. Abdullah’s team used an ROV to look beneath waters affected by coral bleaching and documented seven deeper reefs in Malaysia. The expedition also changed her colleagues’ sense of what they could explore.
Amon brought the deep sea directly to decision makers, connecting leaders at the World Economic Forum to a submersible 350 meters below the surface. Her message was urgent: damage to deep-sea life may be impossible to reverse on human timescales. Across all three stories, exploration did more than reveal the unknown. It gave communities new knowledge, scientists new capabilities, and leaders a reason to pay attention.
Ocean solutions need far more capital—and a better way to put it to work. Opening a panel with leaders from Temasek Foundation, CAPS, Second Muse, and Octave Capital, moderator Christopher Gorell Barnes of Ocean 14 Capital put the gap plainly: “There's single-digit billions going into the oceans. We need hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Temasek Foundation’s Boon Heong Ng argued that philanthropy should take early risks and draw in much larger investments. Second Muse’s Simon Baldwin pushed for funding groups of businesses, rather than betting on one venture at a time: “The ocean is a system. It's not a market.”
CAPS’s Dr. Ruth Shapiro explained why capital can be hard to mobilize across Asia: families often give close to home, while tax incentives and government priorities shape where money goes. The panel’s answer was a sequence of support: grants to test ideas, catalytic capital to help them grow, and policies that make sustained investment possible.
What makes a treaty matter beyond the negotiating room? In a panel moderated by Robin Hicks, High Seas Alliance’s Rizza Sacra-Dejucos said scientists must explain why discoveries such as a new coral species or seamount matter to policy decisions. Suaad Al Harthi of the Environment Society of Oman added that long-term data shows whether those decisions work—and builds local research capacity along the way.
CORA founder Antoinette Taus pointed to the public’s role in holding governments to their commitments. In the Philippines, CORA helped citizens send pledges urging officials to take the BBNJ Agreement seriously during the ratification effort. Together, the speakers laid out a path from evidence policymakers can use, to local teams that keep gathering it, to citizens who press for action.
Declaring a marine protected area is the easy part. Funding it for the long term is harder. In a panel moderated by OceanX Co-CEO Vincent Pieribone, The Nature Conservancy’s Dr. Lizzie McLeod challenged the idea that protected areas bring no economic return: effective no-take areas can increase fish biomass, catches, and tourism revenue. But those benefits do not remove the need for public funding and private partners.
Indonesia plans to protect 30% of its ocean by 2045, yet funding remains a major constraint. Kartika Listriana of its Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries called for more partners, while YKAN’s Aki Baihaki said the state budget covers less than 10% of actual MPA costs. His proposed solution: blended finance that helps community enterprises grow and attract further investment.
The panel’s message was clear: protection on a map needs money, local ownership, and practical monitoring to become protection in the water.
Research changes the ocean only when people can use it. In the day’s final panel, moderated by EcoBusiness CEO Jessica Cheam, speakers showed how to build that purpose into science from the start.
Ocean Alliance’s Dr. Ian Kerr designed SnotBot so teams around the world could collect whale samples with accessible equipment. Its drone footage also helped him show permitting officials what the data alone could not. Global Fishing Watch’s Rebecca Scott described how its free vessel data helps enforcement officers make decisions at sea—and warned that datasets left uncollected today cannot be recreated later.
For Citizens of the Reef’s Andy Ridley, the missing ingredient is participation. The Great Reef Census brings boats, divers, AI, and citizen scientists together to survey reefs at scale, giving people a concrete way to help. Closing the program, Vice Minister Irwan Meyla brought the message back to policy: “We cannot manage what we do not observe.” The next step, he said, is financing that turns promising ideas into action.
The event kicked off on October 7 opening with convergence, bringing together perspectives to speed up solutions that advance the ocean agenda.
OceanX's Roo Rise Expedition uncovered rich Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems, its importance, and its cost if left unprotected.
The Blue Economy is reshaping how we use and protect the ocean. Learn what it means and why it matters.
