Ocean Assist
What is Ocean Assist?
Water Revolution Foundation’s blue investment mechanism for ocean conservation that promotes a new path to nurturing ocean – and human – vitality.
By prioritising projects and adopting scientific tools that are urgently needed to protect the oceans, the superyacht community can maximise financial and non-financial resources to support nature-based solutions and aid the global effort to mitigate ecological impacts: leading the way towards net-zero, empowered to reach nature-positivity.
This collective and traceable approach includes coordination, shared structural commitment, and guidance by leading scientists in the field. It enables the yachting community to support and measure conservation actions, utilise their fleet as a force for positive change, implement sustainable practices, promote innovative ocean-zoning policy, and as such become true ocean stewards.
Ocean Assist: a blue investment portfolio
Going beyond an offsetting mechanism, the Ocean Assist marine conservation portfolio offers transformative investment for protecting ocean values, safeguarding ocean use for generations to come.
Abiding by the RINA-verified Ocean Assist standard, an independent scientific advisory board composed of renowned ocean scientists curates the portfolio by identifying the projects eligible to receive periodic investments: criteria include maximum impact in preserving the oceans and proven eligibility to offset emissions by issuing Regenerative Contribution Units. Each project’s progress is then tracked minutiously and results fed back to the yachting community via Water Revolution Foundation for accountability, adoption and implementation to align yachting with nature, and as such lead by example in the blue economy.
This structured approach enables the integration of financial support for ocean conservation into a business proposition & an investment aligned with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals 6, 13, 14 and 15.
Invest in Ocean Assist Units
“Integrating regenerative investment into our businesses’ value propositions is the way to preserve a future for all” – Dr Vienna Eleuteri, programme architect, Ocean Assist.
Investing in Ocean Assist Units provides the most reliably-known voluntary climate contribution on the market: integrating it into our business models in 2025 is future-proofing for employees, clients, and lives in the ocean.
Each Ocean Assist Unit (OAU) combines 1 Regenerative Contribution Unit (RCU) with 23 Verified Emission Reductions (VERs). Regenerative Contribution Units (RCU) drive ecological gains through quality hectares, restores biodiversity, and builds habitat resilience. Verified Emission Reductions (VERs) represent 23 tonnes of CO₂ removed via high-integrity nature-based solutions projects. Together, 1 OAU anchors climate action as a co-benefit of ecosystem repair, directly supporting biodiversity linked to the yachting industry’s supply chain.
The Ocean Assist Standard is verified by RINA and officially registered in the public eCO₂care Registry, ensuring transparency, traceability, and intergrity throughout the project cycle.
Transparent & no risk of greenwashing accusations. Measured effect & reporting. Real & effective regeneration.
Sustainability
Blue Finance
Financial mechanisms and investments aimed at supporting the sustainable use and conservation of ocean and marine resources, often tied to the broader concept of the “blue economy.” It includes funding for projects like marine ecosystem restoration, reducing ocean pollution, sustainable fisheries, and renewable energy from oceans.
Regenerative
Download the definitions
Key concepts
If AI can speak to whales in 2025… we want to speak the same language as you!
Here are some key concepts to ease your dive into the Ocean Assist Programme, from reminders of sustainability’s definition to debunking big concepts such as the Sustainable Development Goals.
Are you ready to move beyond compensation and towards contribution?
The Global Ocean Agenda
Subscribing the yachting sector to the global ocean agenda at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, the Ocean Assist Programme was announced during official speaking engagements this June 2025.
Through various panel invitations, engagements with official United Nations agencies, and our very own Official side event, Water Revolution Foundation spread knowledge about its pioneering Ocean Assist Programme.
Our Shared Responsibility
In line with the Foundation’s mission to change the mind-set of maritime industries so that they recognise the benefits that investment in marine protection, management, and restoration can bring.
Ocean Assist is unique even among business-based philanthropies, as it is the only industry-wide marine conservation programme aimed to be supported by an entire maritime industry, not a single organisation or small coalition of like-minded companies.
Ocean support must emerge from industry-wide structural commitment, both financial and non-financial. Take our pilot programme, Important Marine Mammal Areas (IMMA), an existing initiative of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Task Force on Marine Mammal Protected Areas, that identifies key areas of the ocean that are important to marine mammals and show potential to be managed for conservation.
A group of prominent shipyards demonstrated how structured support can work by committing to contribute €1 per gross ton delivered in 2021 and 2022. For each new yacht delivered, they matched the gross tonnage in euros and reinvested this via Water Revolution Foundation into IMMA for its North East Atlantic project.
This approach shows how collective contributions can make a tangible impact. Similar initiatives, ensuring a fair distribution of responsibility among all stakeholders, must be enabled and embraced to inspire more industry groups to align their commitments and help adapt yachting for the better.
