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The United Nations Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea and partner Oceanic Global have announced the hybrid celebration of UN World Oceans Day 2024, hosted in-person at the UN Headquarters in New York and broadcast live. This year’s event will take place on Friday, June 7th from 10:30am to 1:30pm EDT (although the official UN designation for World Oceans Day remains June 8th, the following day).

This is what the hosts say about this year’s theme, “Awaken New Depths”:

The ocean sustains humanity and all life on earth. Nonetheless, despite our utter reliance on it, we have only ever explored ~10%. While we know little of the ocean compared to its immense vastness, what we do know is that the consequences of our actions are evident throughout its waters. The knowledge on the ocean’s dire state is clear. Still, each year humanity continues to make shallow and short-sighted decisions that further the likelihood of the ocean’s, as well as our own, demise.

We don’t have time for “out of sight, out of mind.” Our relationship to the ocean needs to urgently change, and our efforts have only skimmed the surface to date. To motivate widespread momentum for the ocean, we need to awaken new depths.

UN World Oceans Day 2024 will explore new depths of understanding, compassion, collaboration and commitment across topics including: Science & Innovation; Capacity Building, Biodiversity; Exploration & Discovery; Ocean X Climate Nexus; and Indigenous, Traditional & Local Community Knowledge. The event programming and speaker lineup will be announced soon.

As usual, one of the highlights is the revealing of the winners of the Photo Competition for UN World Oceans Day, which is once again hosted by DPG. To find out more about this free-to-enter competition and submit your entries, head over to the competition page.

You can watch last year’s UN World Oceans Day event here.