After a temporary break from publication last year, the GOBI newsletter is back – packed with news from around the GOBI community and beyond. Happy reading!

Building ecologically representative and well-connected High Seas ABMT networks was the subject of a 3-day joint GOBI–IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas High Seas Specialist Group (HSSG) workshop, which took place at Duke University on 12-14 March 2025. Bringing together a group of around 30 experts on high seas ecology, policy and connectivity, bioregionalisation, marineContinue Reading Building scientific foundations for ecologically representative and well-connected high seas ABMT networks

The sixteenth conference of the meeting of CBD Parties (COP16) took place in Cali, Colombia on 21 October to 1 November 2024.  Some 23,000 delegates drawn from country leaders and negotiators, scientists and non-governmental organisations worked intensively to address how to renew efforts to combat biodiversity loss and promote collective action to achieve an ecosystemContinue Reading GOBI at COP16: EBSAs, connectivity… and costumes!

To support GOBI’s side event at COP16 this week, a new policy brief on ocean connectivity has been published. Co-authored by Daniel Dunn, Lily Bentley, Autumn-Lynn Harrison and Anna Metaxas and produced in partnership with the Deep Ocean Stewardship, “Linking distant worlds: Understanding and measuring connectivity in the global ocean” examines the different types ofContinue Reading New GOBI policy brief on ocean connectivity

From 2016 to 2023, GOBI received a EUR 6.5M grant from the German Government’s International Climate Initiative (IKI) to use the information contained within EBSA descriptions as the basis for promoting environmental protection and management for specific areas of the global ocean. This seven-year programme of work has helped determine the strengths, challenges and limitationsContinue Reading When a plan comes together: Highlights from GOBI’s work, 2016-2023

The latest edition of the GOBI newsletter is now out! Featuring key results emerging from GOBI’s 7-year grant from the International Climate Initiative, latest ocean policy developments, recent workshops and meetings, ocean conservation initiatives, and much more.

24 October 2023: Ten years ago today, the IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force was launched at the International Marine Protected Area Congress (IMPAC3) in Marseille. At that time, it was a distant dream to establish a scientific process, drawing on masses of published and unpublished data, to bring together disparate groups of whaleContinue Reading Celebrating 10 years of IMMAs

BirdLife International has unveiled its Marine Flyways – the six major routes that migratory seabirds regularly use to travel between their breeding and non-breeding areas. A special preview event on 12 October 2023 introduced the concept to more than 100 participants at an event at BirdLife HQ in Cambridge UK and online, ahead of theContinue Reading BirdLife International launches marine flyways

The final workshop under GOBI’s grant from the International Climate Initiative took place in Muscat, Oman on 2-4 October 2023. Showcasing the tools and methodologies that GOBI has developed over the past 7 years, this workshop aimed to demonstrate their use in supporting ecosystem-oriented marine management and marine spatial planning in the North-West Indian OceanContinue Reading Bringing it all together in Oman

Connectivity is an essential component that contributes to how ecosystems function. Numerous studies have shown that species that depend on different areas for feeding, breeding, and development also rely on how these spaces are connected. A comprehensive assessment of how these individual studies described global marine connectivity is a first step in learning how toContinue Reading Lessons on marine connectivity after 25+ years of tracking migratory species