silhouette of marine animal surrounded by school of fish.

Inside the ambitious push to protect a third of the world’s ocean

Preserving our pristine seas will boost biodiversity, replenish fishing stocks, and store carbon.

Black-striped salema off Isabela Island in the Galápagos make way for a sea lion. After a 2015 Pristine Seas expedition, a new reserve around Darwin and Wolf Islands added more than 15,000 square miles of protected area that is closed to fishing.
Published August 13, 2020
9 min read
This story appears in the September 2020 issue of National Geographic magazine.

The nonprofit National Geographic Society, working to conserve Earth’s resources, helped fund this article.
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