Supporting Scientific Advances for all on World Oceans Day

Every year, World Oceans Day takes place on 8 June. Established in 1992, this day highlights the importance of celebrating, safeguarding, and raising awareness for the marine environment and the threats it faces. Annually, the private and public sectors, scientific bodies, indigenous communities, and youth activists come together under one common theme. This year’s theme is 'Planet Ocean: Tides are changing'.

Exploring our precious oceans

While oceans cover most of the earth, only a small percentage of their waters has been properly explored. MSC is proud to support valuable research into our blue planet and help to raise awareness of environmental challenges through our sponsorship of Team Malizia, who are participating in the challenging seven-leg around-the-world Ocean Race.

The team's 60-foot open monohull Malizia – Seaexplorer (IMOCA class), powered by the wind, has an onboard ocean centre that measures CO2 concentrations in the ocean, salinity, temperature and other data throughout the race. Working with UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) and OceanOPS, its goal is to help scientists understand what is happening to the sea by capturing data from remote locations and unmapped zones they could not otherwise access.

The data is live streamed during the race to enable scientific partners not only to measure the impacts of climate change, but also to compare this year's research with the data collected in 2022 in the Vendee Globe race, at the time the largest dataset ever collected using this technology.

World Oceans Day

This year's Oceans Day event on the theme of 'Planet Ocean: Tides are changing' will feature world renown speakers. They include aquanaut and ocean conservationist Fabien Cousteau, oceanographer and marine biologist Dr Sylvia Earle, and actor and 'Aquaman' Jason Momoa. They will share thoughts on how we need to put the ocean first and discuss why greater scientific understanding is so critical as the challenges to the ocean continue to grow.

Dr Sylvia Earle, one of the speakers at this year's World Oceans Day, will be the godmother of Explora I, the first ship of Explora Journeys, the new luxury brand of the MSC Cruise division.

A celebrated pioneer of deep-sea exploration, Dr Earle has dedicated her life to ocean conservation and is a vocal advocate for protecting the world's oceans and marine life, a passion and mission that MSC shares across all our businesses.

Image © Antoine Auriol / Team Malizia