Participants join the expedition as active contributors to a UN Ocean Decade Action, engaging directly with the scientific, cultural, and diplomatic fabric of one of the world's most complex and celebrated seas.

 

Through Gaia First's institutional partnerships, the expedition opens doors that are rarely accessible to students and young professionals: working sessions with SPA/RAC, the regional body responsible for Specially Protected Areas in the Mediterranean under the Barcelona Convention; engagement with IMO programmes on underwater noise and marine pollution; and encounters with the researchers, policymakers, and community leaders who are shaping the future of ocean governance.

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Aboard the Pelican of London — a 45-metre tall ship that trains cadets of the British Royal Navy and has sailed the world's most demanding waters — participants learn offshore navigation alongside experienced crew. But the ship is also a floating seminar room, a cultural bridge, and a field laboratory. What is learned at sea is tested on land: through hub visits, roundtables, and field encounters with the local communities, TEK holders, and conservation leaders.

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Through Gaia First's developing hub network, the expedition connects participants to a wider ecosystem of action: to the territories where conservation meets culture, to the places where Mediterranean natural heritage and cultural heritage are not two separate things but one living inheritance, and to the people who have been its custodians for generations.

 

On land, the expedition also opens onto a series of roundtables, keynote encounters, and curated meetings with eminent academics, senior institutional figures, cultural personalities, and media, offering participants a rare window into the conversations that shape environmental policy, scientific agendas, and public narratives around the Mediterranean and beyond.

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All of this unfolds within a framework of cultural, environmental, and scientific diplomacy, the conviction that protecting the living world requires not only field action and data, but the patient, sustained work of building understanding across cultures, disciplines, and generations.

 

→ Discover the Hubs

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All observations, data, and insights generated during the expedition feed directly into the Guardians of Gaia platform, contributing to SDG reporting, open science, and territorial action.

 

This program is based on an approach that is:

- Transdisciplinary. All academic backgrounds welcome, the expedition is designed for curious minds, not specific degrees.

- Intergenerational. Founded on transmission between knowledge holders and the next generation of ocean stewards.

- Intercultural. Valuing Indigenous, traditional, and local knowledge alongside science.

- Participatory.  Local actors and students co-construct the experience, the expedition learns from the communities it visits, not about them.

- Active. Every day combines navigation, fieldwork, workshops, and direct encounters with the institutional and human ecosystem of Mediterranean conservation.

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This is not abstract knowledge. It is learning anchored in place, and in purpose.

You are not observing the world. You are helping shape how it is protected and better governed.