(Acknowledging the authors)
Before sharing my reflection, I would like to encourage readers to refer to the original paper by Prue Francis, Rachel Kelly, Louise Swanson, Tanveer M. Adyel, Benjamin Arthur, Kirsten Benkendorff, and their colleagues. This reflection is not intended to replace or summarise their work comprehensively. Instead, it is a personal reflection inspired by their publication. Readers interested in the full discussion, evidence, recommendations, and context are encouraged to read the original paper.
Reflection: Ocean Literacy Begins with People
Inspired by Francis, P., Kelly, R., Swanson, L., Adyel, T. M., Arthur, B., Benkendorff, K., and colleagues (2026). Strengthening ocean literacy: Marine science education and training to ensure Australia’s blue future. Australian Journal of Maritime & Ocean Affairs.
One of the privileges of reading academic work is recognising the immense effort behind it. Research is rarely just a collection of words on a page. It represents knowledge, collaboration, discussion, experience, and commitment from the people involved.
Reading Strengthening ocean literacy: Marine science education and training to ensure Australia’s blue future gave me an opportunity not only to learn from the authors’ work, but also to reflect on a question that has increasingly shaped my own thinking about the ocean.
As I read the paper, one idea remained with me throughout:
Ocean sustainability ultimately depends on people.
We often discuss the future of the ocean through environmental challenges, scientific knowledge, technologies, policies, and governance. All of these are essential.
But behind each of them are people.
People produce marine science.
People interpret knowledge.
People design policies.
People make decisions.
People work with coastal and marine environments.
And ultimately, people influence how societies understand, value, use, and protect the ocean.
This is why I found the authors’ discussion of ocean literacy particularly meaningful.
Ocean literacy encourages us to think not only about knowledge of the ocean, but also about our relationship with it: how the ocean influences us and how our decisions and actions influence the ocean in return.
The paper brings attention to marine science education and training and to strengthening ocean literacy in Australia. For me, this opens a broader human-dimensions question.
Knowledge matters.
Education matters.
Scientific capability matters.
But knowledge does not automatically become behaviour.
Information does not automatically become responsibility.
Awareness does not automatically become stewardship.
Somewhere between what people know and what people do, there are deeper processes involving identity, values, experience, relationships, institutions, and ways of thinking.
What happens between knowing about the ocean and acting for the ocean?
Reading this paper also helped me understand where Oceaninminds sits.
Oceaninminds is not intended to duplicate the important work being undertaken in ocean literacy, marine science education, or professional training. Nor is it intended to offer an alternative definition of ocean literacy.
Instead, Oceaninminds explores a complementary space: the human relationships and ways of thinking that can influence how knowledge about the ocean is understood, valued, and carried into everyday life.
This leads me to a question at the heart of Oceaninminds:
How do human mindsets shape our relationship with the ocean before knowledge becomes action?
People do not encounter the ocean only through scientific information.
We encounter it through culture.
Through education.
Through livelihoods.
Through communities.
Through institutions.
Through memories and experiences.
Through the places where we live.
And through the identities we develop in relation to maritime environments.
These relationships can influence how ocean knowledge is interpreted, valued, and potentially translated into action.
This is also where I see a genuine connection with my own research journey through Maritime Identity Development (MID) and Social Mindset Restructuring (SMR).
My work in these areas has encouraged me to think about how relationships with maritime environments can develop through social interaction, experience, identity, institutions, and collective ways of thinking.
I see this as complementary to, rather than a replacement for, the ocean-literacy perspective that inspired this reflection.
Ocean literacy provides an important foundation for thinking about people’s understanding of the ocean and their relationship with it. My own interest through Oceaninminds is in continuing to ask what happens within that human relationship: how identity, social experience, institutions, and ways of thinking may influence how ocean knowledge is interpreted and carried forward.
Another aspect of the paper that stayed with me was the collaboration behind it.
The ocean does not belong to one discipline.
Understanding it requires contributions from marine scientists, social scientists, educators, communities, policymakers, practitioners, and many others.
Different forms of expertise allow us to see different dimensions of the same ocean.
That matters because the challenges facing marine environments are interconnected. Climate change, biodiversity, coastal development, resource use, governance, education, and social change do not exist independently of one another.
Perhaps strengthening our relationship with the ocean therefore involves more than increasing what people know.
It may also involve strengthening the relationships through which ocean knowledge is produced, shared, interpreted, valued, and carried into society.
This leaves me with one question:
How can knowing the ocean become caring about the ocean—and how can caring about the ocean become meaningful action?
I do not think there is one simple answer.
Education matters.
Science matters.
Policy matters.
Institutions matter.
Communities matter.
Identity matters.
And the relationships between all of them matter.
For me, reading the work of Francis and colleagues reinforces something fundamental about the idea behind Oceaninminds.
If we want a future in which people understand and care for the ocean, we need to keep thinking not only about the knowledge people hold, but also about the human relationships, identities, institutions, and ways of thinking through which that knowledge acquires meaning.
Perhaps bringing the ocean into our minds is one small part of that journey.
And perhaps the more deeply we understand our relationship with the ocean, the better prepared we become to imagine—and create—a more sustainable future with it.
A note to readers
This reflection represents my personal learning journey after reading the authors’ work. It should not be interpreted as a review or a substitute for the original publication. I warmly encourage readers to explore the original paper, Strengthening ocean literacy: Marine science education and training to ensure Australia’s blue future, by Prue Francis, Rachel Kelly, Louise Swanson, Tanveer M. Adyel, Benjamin Arthur, Kirsten Benkendorff, and their colleagues. This reflection simply captures some of the questions and ideas their work prompted in my own evolving thinking through Oceaninminds.
Original paper
Francis, P., Kelly, R., Swanson, L., Adyel, T. M., Arthur, B., Benkendorff, K., Bishop, M. J., Bostock, H., Campbell, M. L., Church, E., Condie, C., Dwivedi, V., Dyer, M., England, M., Fullbrook, L., Huveneers, C., Johnson, M., Le Busque, B., McIntosh, R. R., Meyer, A., Mos, B., Mrazova, J., O’Brien, A., Pecl, G. T., Schaeffer, A., Shellock, R. J., Smith, G. A., Smithers, S., Vila-Concejo, A., & Wood, G. (2026). Strengthening ocean literacy: Marine science education and training to ensure Australia’s blue future. Australian Journal of Maritime & Ocean Affairs.
