Ocean Conservation, Education & Science Nonprofits: Meet the Partners We Support

World Ocean Month wrapped up at the end of June. By the time July gets going, most of that attention has already moved on to something else. Ours hasn't.

beachgoods.com is a certified 1% for the Planet member. At least 1% of our annual revenue goes to nonprofits working on ocean, lake, river, and wetland conservation, whether or not there's a holiday on the calendar that week. We've mentioned that pledge before. What we haven't done is properly introduce you to the people actually doing the work.

This is the first of two posts on that list. This one covers the nine partners focused specifically on the ocean. Here's who they are, and what they're doing with the support.

The Scientists Watching the Ocean Change

Some of the most useful conservation work doesn't happen on a beach at all. It happens in a lab or on a research vessel, and it's what tells everyone else where to focus.

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), founded in 1930, is the oldest independent ocean research institution in the country. Its scientists study everything from deep ocean currents to whether the chemistry on icy moons elsewhere in the solar system could support life. Late in 2025, NASA selected WHOI to lead a five-year, roughly $5 million project studying the organic chemistry of moons like Europa, ahead of NASA's Europa Clipper mission arriving there in 2030. Closer to home, WHOI's research has also found that industrial fishing has already stripped significant biomass from the ocean's mid-depth "twilight zone."

Oregon State University's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences (CEOAS) studies the physical ocean and atmosphere together: currents, sea level, glaciers, climate. In June 2026, CEOAS researchers helped make the case for preserving funding for a $386 million federal ocean-monitoring observatory network that was on the chopping block. Their Oregon-specific sea-level forecasts, published earlier this year, are more locally accurate than most global climate models.

The Ones Rebuilding What's Already Damaged

Some ocean damage doesn't wait for science or policy to catch up. It just needs to be fixed by hand.

Coral Restoration Foundation is the largest reef restoration organization in the world, and its work is about as hands-on as ocean conservation gets: growing coral fragments in underwater nurseries, then diving down and physically replanting them onto dying reefs. Between October 2025 and June 2026 alone, the foundation outplanted nearly 16,000 corals across 17 species onto 10 reef sites in the Florida Keys. It has also started producing "Flonduran" coral, a cross between Florida coral and heat-tolerant Honduran coral, now being tested in the wild as reefs face repeated bleaching events.

The Ocean Cleanup and Policy Network

A lot of ocean conservation comes down to catching what's happening in real time, then cleaning it up and pushing for better laws. These three partners cover that ground at a scale most local crews can't match.

SkyTruth takes a different approach entirely: satellites and AI instead of a research vessel. Its free tool, Cerulean, scans public satellite radar imagery to detect oil slicks and flag the vessels likely responsible, evidence that reporters, regulators, and other nonprofits then act on. In June 2026, Cerulean went multilingual, adding Spanish, Portuguese, French, Swahili, and Indonesian so more of the world can use it. In October 2025, Greenpeace Romania used Cerulean's data to map more than 200 verified oil slicks in Romanian waters.

Ocean Conservancy runs the Global Ghost Gear Initiative, tackling abandoned fishing gear that traps and kills marine life, and leads the International Coastal Cleanup as part of its broader plastics program. The 2026 Cleanup falls on September 19 and marks the effort's 40th anniversary, with the Miami host committee for the FIFA World Cup joining as a partner. Ocean Conservancy also built Clean Swell, an app that lets everyday volunteers log exactly what kind of trash they find, turning cleanups into real data that feeds federal policy work on plastic producer accountability and ghost gear recovery.

Surfrider Foundation owns the most locally embedded version of this work: volunteer chapters that organize weekend beach cleanups and test local water quality through the Blue Water Task Force, Surfrider's flagship testing program. For 2026, Surfrider is running 62 Blue Water Task Force labs, targeting 1,000 cleanups and over 200,000 pounds of trash removed, pushing plastic-reduction legislation in six states, and opposing a federal offshore drilling plan covering roughly 1.3 billion acres of ocean.

The Ocean Storytellers Making the Case

Not every nonprofit on this list does fieldwork. Some of the most effective ocean advocacy is about getting the right story in front of the right people, and building the next generation who'll keep telling it.

Mission Blue, founded by ocean explorer Dr. Sylvia Earle, identifies "Hope Spots," ocean areas around the world that are critical enough to deserve protection, and works to get them designated and funded. Per Mission Blue's 2025 Annual Report, the Hope Spot network has grown to 169 sites in more than 115 countries, covering 57 million square kilometers of ocean, with three new Hope Spots named in 2025: Chesapeake Bay, Fernando de Noronha in Brazil, and Cordell Bank off California. Nearly $1.9 million has gone directly to local conservation leaders through the network's Hope Spot Champion Fund.

The Ocean Project is the nonprofit that created World Ocean Day in the first place, and its real focus now is training the people who'll carry it forward. Its Youth Leadership Training program has trained roughly 5,000 young people from more than 140 countries since 2020, and its Youth Advisory Council now has 149 alumni across 66 countries helping shape the day's programming. This year's theme, "Reimagine," comes with a new multi-year action theme for 2026 through 2030 focused on strengthening marine protected areas worldwide.

Tracing Ocean Plastic to Its Source

Most ocean plastic doesn't start in the ocean. It starts somewhere else entirely, and 5 Gyres is the nonprofit built specifically to trace it back.

Rather than running cleanups, 5 Gyres tests actual consumer products (fishing gear, synthetic textiles, personal care items) in the lab to see how they fragment and where their pollution really originates. In 2025, the organization partnered with filtration company CLEANR specifically to target microfiber pollution shed from washing machines. That research fed directly into a bigger 2026 moment: in April, the EPA classified microplastics as a "priority contaminant group," alongside a $144 million federal health-impact initiative that 5 Gyres' work helped inform.

The Bottom Line

Nine very different approaches to the same goal: keeping the ocean livable. Some of it happens on a satellite feed. Some of it happens with a bucket and a pair of gloves. Some of it happens by training the next fifteen-year-old who'll pick up where this generation leaves off.

This is what beachgoods.com's 1% for the Planet commitment actually funds. Not a logo on a webpage. Real organizations doing real work, all year, whether or not there's a designated day for it. Next month, we'll follow the water inland with a companion post on the freshwater nonprofits we back — lakes, rivers, and estuaries. We'll link to it here once it's live.