Every effort for the ocean, finally adding up
Plant a mangrove, clear a net, count what came back — and see it join everything else being done for the ocean, in the same units.
170 ocean variables. Every one with its source, or a recorded reason why no source exists anywhere in the world.
The work is happening. Almost none of it becomes visible.
- Someone replants a mangrove shoreline.
- Someone else pulls ghost nets off a reef.
- Someone counts urchins until the kelp comes back.
Every one of them changes something real. And then it stops there. What one team learns stays with that team. No one can see whether the ocean is answering, or where the next pair of hands would matter most.
You will not know whether it held. Neither will anyone else.
A large proportion of coral restoration projects do not track the things they themselves set out to change, or stop watching too early. The outcomes of a large proportion of projects are never written down at all.
Every project contributes. Almost none of it adds up.
Not because anyone worked badly. Because there was nothing to add it up with.
Recording the work the same way is what turns separate efforts into something that can be coordinated.
Measurement flows back to the people who set the standards. What the work changed flows back to no one.
Built on the international standard, honest about where it departs from it
The variable set follows the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting and the Ocean Accounts framework — the international statistical standard for measuring the environment alongside the economy — in structure, vocabulary and the way condition is compared against a reference state.
Every variable carries either a published global value with its source and reference state, or a recorded reason why no such value exists: an absent observation network, a technical barrier to measurement, methods that exist but are not comparable, data that exist but are withheld, a sample biased by where attention goes, or a quantity that does not reduce to a single global figure.
It departs from the framework in five documented ways, most importantly by working globally rather than nationally, and by publishing an aggregate where the framework publishes a set.
This is not a statistical product and does not produce official statistics. It is not compiled by, endorsed by, or aligned in status with any national statistical office. Where the framework and this platform disagree, the framework is the standard.
Read the full divergence register|See every variable and its source
I built this because I could not find anywhere that answered what restoration work had actually moved, in units that let one project be compared with another. Compiling the variable set took the better part of a year, and most of what I learned was about what nobody measures. That is recorded here too.
What you can see here
The state of the ocean
The current figure for every variable where one exists, the reference state it is compared against, the source, and how far it can be trusted.
So you can tell what is actually known from what is repeated.
Coverage, and why it is missing
How much of the index is measured and how much is not — broken down by reason. Data that exist but are withheld close through requests. An absent observation network closes through fieldwork. A technical barrier does not close at all.
So you can tell a gap in the ocean from a gap in the data, and stop treating them the same way.
Where effort is already going
Which variables have restoration work behind them, which have none, and what is planned but not yet done.
So you find out that eight others are working on the same thing before you start, not a year after.
Cuts through the data
By ocean system, by Ocean Accounts component — ecosystem condition, pressures from economic activity, designated use — and by stage of work.
So a portfolio spanning six systems becomes one view instead of forty reports.
Free, and it stays free. An account gives you the full variable set, your project's contribution in comparable units, and a view of where others are working.
Add your project — about ten minutesFor funders and grant-making organisations
This measures the work and what it changed, not the money that paid for it.
You already know what your grantees did — their reports tell you. What the reports cannot tell you is how any of it compares: with each other, with what the ocean needed, or with the work other funders paid for on the same variable.
Comparable at last
Three points of coral cover against two hundred hectares of mangrove is not a comparison. Weighted against a common set, it becomes one — and a portfolio spanning six ocean systems becomes a single view instead of forty separate reports.
What's outside your portfolio
You see your grantees. You do not see that eight other funders support the same variable, or that another goes unfunded entirely. Tracking collective outcomes rather than organisation-level metrics is a stated goal across the sector; there has been no instrument for it.
Detail without asking more
The standard grant cycle burdens both sides: practitioners lose programme time to reporting, funders lose the time they would spend understanding what came back. Here a project enters a measurement once — and it arrives already broken down by variable, system, component and stage.
Evidence told apart from assertion
A completed project still being monitored is stronger evidence than one that stopped watching when the grant ended. Monitoring is recorded separately from project stage, so the difference is visible rather than assumed.
Gaps recorded as gaps
When grantees believe only successes are welcome, reported results skew. Here an unmeasured variable is recorded as unmeasured, not as no change — and where nothing is measured anywhere in the world, that is stated too.
The portfolio workspace is in development. Register your interest and you will hear when it opens — and can shape what it does before it is built.
One email, from me, within a few days. No newsletter.
The platform does not recommend where to give. It removes the part of the decision that was guesswork.