In this video, Amanda Nickson, who leads Pew’s international fisheries work, explains how the ocean benefits billions of people—providing food, jobs, and livelihoods, as well as absorbing carbon that would otherwise accelerate climate change—and what Pew is doing to defend the ocean from a mounting list of severe threats.

Perhaps the biggest of those is overfishing, which has left one-third of marine fish populations overfished and another nearly 60 percent cannot sustain any increases in fishing—an issue that Nickson says world leaders must address before species are lost forever. Other threats include plastic pollution, illegal fishing, ocean acidification, and a lack of rules to govern the high seas.

The good news is that these are solvable problems. Pew is working with a broad and diverse range of partners to help governments and international bodies protect 30 percent of the ocean by 2030, which experts say is essential in ensuring a sustainable future for our seas—and for us.