Ocean Best Practices

The importance of the ocean is beyond economic, providing us with services such as 50% of the oxygen we breathe, sequestering over 26% of the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, regulating our climate, as well as providing the recreational and cultural services that we all enjoy. Given its vast dimension and internal complexity, efficient monitoring and predicting of the planet’s ocean needs to be a collaborative effort from local to global scales. An essential requirement for such collaborative efforts is the need to follow well-defined and reproducible methods across activities: from strategies for structuring observing systems, sensor deployment and usage, and the generation of data and information products, to ethical and governance aspects when executing ocean observing. These methods should be broadly adopted by the ocean community and, where appropriate, should evolve into “Ocean Best Practices” to meet the challenges we face today. 

A best practice is a methodology that has repeatedly produced superior results relative to other methodologies with the same objective; to be fully elevated to a best practice, a promising method should be adopted and employed by multiple organisations.

In this course we will introduce you to the concept of Best Practices and the Ocean Best Practices System (OBPS), and we will provide an overview of the importance and relevance of using and sharing Ocean Best Practices and Standards, as well as on how to create, submit, share and search for Best Practices in the OBPS repository.

- Understand and explain what (ocean) best practices are and what elevated them above all other methods
- Be able to create a best practice
- Be able to submit a best practice in the OBPS
- Be able to search for a specific Best Practice in the OBPS

How to enrol

Please register on the OceanExpert website (www.oceanexpert.org). Once your OceanExpert account is approved (this is not done immediately), you can self-enrol in the course. If you already have an OceanExpert account, you can self-enrol in the course using your OceanExpert username and password. Enrolment is available until 15 December 2025.

• Step 1. Log in OceanTeacher e-Learning platform, then access the course page.
• Step 2. Click on self-enrolment. The enrolment key for the course is: OBPS2025sp

UNESCO is committed to promoting equal access principles. Applications from minority or underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged.