2025 has been a busy and energising year for HMC. We’ve travelled across the globe for conferences, workshops, and project delivery – all while staying focused on what matters most: creating meaningful impact, driving innovation, and helping shape a more sustainable future for the ocean.
We kicked off the year attending the Ocean and Coastal Futures conference as well as having our well-deserved Christmas get together in London. In March, we were in Tokyo for the 12th Annual World Ocean Summit & Expo to discuss how to invest in blue economy to achieve ocean health and prosperity. As the summer came around, Claire and Kofi had an excursion in the Caribbean on behalf of and in partnership with the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism for the Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) Step-by-Step Guide and Protocol.
In September, we co-hosted a Blue Finance conference in collaboration with OCF and travelled to Lithuania for ICES 2025! It was a busy Autumn for Lucy as she was on the “Oceans: Our Biggest Opportunity on Earth” panel at Blue Earth Summit in October and attended the MASTS Annual Science Meeting in November.
Strengthening UK Marine Policy & Practice
We’re proud to look back on a year defined by pivotal projects across UK marine policy, sustainability, and evidence gathering.
Our work with Natural England enabled us to support the development and implementation of Marine Net Gain – helping shape an approach designed to leave the marine environment in a better state than before development.
For Defra, we delivered the national pilot of the Fishing Industry Social Survey This involved leading project management, survey design, researcher recruitment, and running online, phone, and face-to-face data collection across England’s fishing sector.
HMC reviewed The Crown Estate’s (TCE’s) Habitats Regulations Assessment Expert Working Group to assess how it had functioned against its objectives, and whether it could be adapted to function differently in the future to deliver TCE outcomes. The work included member consultations, mapping potential overlaps with other TCE groups, and producing recommendations for future objectives and structure, (supported by a workshop and visual mapping).
For Scotland’s National Marine Plan 2 (NMP2), we analysed community engagement findings and feedback from more than 100 organisations — identifying priorities, challenges, and opportunities to strengthen future policy.
We assessed the Marine Protected Area networks in England and Northern Ireland, reviewing management effectiveness, monitoring practices, and climate resilience. The work set out recommendations to improve governance, ecological coherence, and stakeholder engagement.
Driving Research Impact and Environmental Evidence for Offshore Energy
It has been another strong year within our research impact team at HMC have delivered scientific leadership, collaborative programming and supporting evidence for the UK’s offshore renewable energy ambitions alongside its oil and gas decommissioning commitments.
Within INSITE, we reached several major milestones. We successfully delivered SIME 2025, wrapped up INSITE Phase 2 while also launching INSITE Phase 3 and the Value of Marine Artificial Structures project with National Environment Research Council and Offshore Industry partners, both of which aim to provide stakeholders with an independent scientific evidence base to better understand the influence and ecological value of marine artificial structures (MAS) on the North Sea ecosystem. We continued to deliver the governance and strategy for the £9.5 million ECOWind science programme, coordinating research, supporting collaboration between academia and industry, and ensuring the programme’s outputs feed directly into future marine policy and planning.
We are also coordinating the multi-partner ECOFlow research programme, supporting the integration of science, policy, and industry, so that new research translates into evidence and action aligned with UK priorities.
In Ireland, for the MARÉRE project, we identified key evidence gaps at the interface between offshore renewable energy and the marine environment. The final report highlights where evidence is strong, where gaps remain, and where better coordination will be needed as offshore development accelerates, helping to guide future research aligned with national priorities.
Another major milestone was our assessment, in partnership with Human Economics, of how NERC-funded research has underpinned the UK offshore wind revolution. We showed that NERC research underpins nearly every stage of the development cycle, contributing to more than £3 billion in economic value and delivering wide environmental benefits – a powerful demonstration of why foundational marine science matters.
Supporting Global Ocean Leadership
This year, we delivered several projects focused on sustainable marine and fisheries management for the Commonwealth Secretariat; Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and Defra.
For the Commonwealth Secretariat we were commissioned to
- Develop a market-ready step-by-step guide for governments preparing and managing sovereign blue bonds.
- Design and deliver introductory Marine Protected Area (MPA) training for officials and stakeholders across the Caribbean, Pacific and Indian Ocean regions, combining online modules with practical exercises to build skills in MPA design, monitoring, and management
We also carried out research for Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) and FCDO which included 40 stakeholder interviews that assessed how digital technologies can support sustainable fisheries management, combat illegal fishing and enhance regional data sharing in the Gulf of Thailand (Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia).
Looking Ahead
As 2025 draws to a close, we’re proud of the projects, partnerships, and progress that have helped us continue our mission: protecting the ocean and driving meaningful change across the blue economy. 2026 is already shaping up to be another exciting year. Thank you to all our partners, clients, collaborators – and the whole HMC team – for your continued support and shared commitment to this mission.