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When decades-old success stories are used to reassure us about an ocean crisis that’s only getting worse

Bluewashing — the institutional cousin of greenwashing — isn’t confined to corporations. Public bodies can shape narratives by highlighting genuine successes while downplaying the severity of remaining challenges. This kind of storytelling may not involve falsehoods, but it can still leave the public with a misleading impression.

We came across a United Nations article the other day. The headline struck an optimistic tone: “How global agreements are saving the world’s seas.” It opened with a success story from the beaches of Naples, Italy. Once heavily polluted by sewage and industrial waste, they are now clean enough to earn international recognition — including Blue Flag status — for their sustainability.

The article went on to celebrate the 1976 Barcelona Convention, the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Regional Seas Programme, and the power of international diplomacy. It painted an optimistic picture. 

But we couldn’t help thinking back to two documentaries.

Seaspiracy (2021) challenged the effectiveness of the institutions supposedly protecting our oceans, arguing that many have become better at projecting reassurance than delivering meaningful change. Four years later, David Attenborough’s Ocean painted a more nuanced picture. While exposing the devastating impacts of industrial fishing, habitat destruction and climate change, it also showed something equally important: marine ecosystems can recover remarkably quickly when meaningful protection is actually enforced.

Reading the UN’s article, we couldn’t shake the feeling that it focused almost exclusively on those past successes while glossing over the scale of today’s crisis. It read less like an objective assessment than an exercise in self-congratulation.

This felt uncomfortably close to institutional greenwashing. Or bluewashing, since it specifically regards the sea.

Bluewashing: the misdirection

We’re not denying that the beaches of Naples are cleaner than they were in the 1970s. That’s a genuine public health victory, and credit where it’s due — sewage treatment and industrial waste regulation have come a long way.

But the UN article wraps itself in that decades-old achievement and presents it as evidence that today’s international framework is effectively saving the seas.

That’s where the spin begins.

The article celebrates 145 countries participating in regional seas agreements, legally binding pollution controls and science-backed policymaking. Those are real achievements. Yet what stands out just as much is what receives comparatively little attention.

Overfishing

In the Mediterranean — the article’s own success story — more than 70% of assessed fish stocks remain overfished, among the highest rates in the world. Coastal waters may be cleaner, but marine ecosystems continue to deteriorate under the pressure of industrial fishing.

The Regional Seas Programme can encourage cooperation and scientific monitoring, but it has little authority to enforce fisheries management or prevent destructive fishing practices. Bottom trawling continues, biodiversity declines, and the gap between environmental ambition and political reality remains enormous.

Plastic and microplastics

The article acknowledges that “every day, the equivalent of 2,000 garbage trucks full of plastic are dumped into the world’s oceans, rivers and lakes,” yet treats this staggering figure almost as a passing remark. Then it moves on, returning to its success story.

But plastic pollution is hardly a footnote. The Mediterranean is among the world’s most plastic-polluted seas, while microplastics have now been detected in human blood, lungs, placentas and other organs.

Despite years of negotiations, the world still lacks a binding global treaty capable of significantly reducing plastic production. Action plans exist. Nice words. Production continues to rise.

PFAS and forever chemicals

PFAS — also called “forever chemicals” because they barely degrade in the environment — are not mentioned at all.

These synthetic compounds enter rivers and seas through industrial discharge, agricultural runoff and wastewater. They accumulate throughout marine food chains and increasingly appear in wildlife and humans alike.

While environmental agreements continue to monitor many traditional pollutants, chemical innovation moves faster than international regulation.

The fundraising pitch disguised as journalism

One detail appears repeatedly throughout the article: the Environment Fund.

Again and again, readers are reminded that UNEP’s work depends on flexible financing and donor contributions. The implication is clear: support the fund because international cooperation works.

To some extent, that’s true. The Barcelona Convention demonstrates that coordinated environmental action can produce measurable results.

But the article also risks conflating two very different questions.

Cleaning up sewage pollution around Naples is not the same as saving today’s oceans from industrial overfishing, plastic production, climate change or chemical contamination. Those are global, systemic challenges operating on an entirely different scale.

You can’t solve a 21st-century extinction crisis with a 1970s toolkit.

Using yesterday’s success to reassure readers about today’s crisis feels less like balanced reporting and more like institutional storytelling.

Bluewashing: saving the seas — or saving the narrative?

So, are global agreements saving the seas? Not really.

They have undoubtedly helped reduce pollution, improve scientific cooperation and encourage governments to work together.

But managing some symptoms is not the same as solving the crisis.

Saving the seas would require measures such as:

• banning destructive bottom trawling;
• dramatically reducing plastic production;
• regulating agricultural and industrial runoff carrying PFAS, pesticides and excess nutrients;
• establishing large, genuinely protected marine reserves;
• enforcing meaningful consequences for governments and industries that fail to comply.

The UN’s Regional Seas Programme does none of these things. It’s a talking shop — important for science, maybe, but powerless against the corporate and political interests that are systematically emptying our oceans of life.

Many of these ideas have already been discussed within international forums. The problem is that discussion is not implementation.

International agreements often depend on voluntary commitments, political consensus and national enforcement. Against industries worth hundreds of billions of dollars, those mechanisms frequently prove too weak.

The documentaries vs the bluewashing narrative

Seaspiracy was criticised for its sensationalism. But its core thesis holds up: the organisations we trust to protect the oceans are often toothless, conflicted, or complicit. They celebrate small wins to obscure massive failures. They shift the burden onto consumers (stop using straws!) while letting industrial fishing and petrochemical giants off the hook.

Ocean offers a more hopeful perspective. It shows that marine ecosystems can recover with astonishing speed when governments establish and enforce genuine protections. If only it would ever happen…

Taken together, the two documentaries point to the same conclusion.

Recovery is possible.

Political will remains the missing ingredient.

Final thoughts

The UN’s article is not a lie. It is, however, a half-truth — which is often more dangerous.

Yes, international cooperation has delivered genuine environmental successes. The recovery of parts of the Mediterranean proves that coordinated action can work.

But those successes should not be mistaken for evidence that the world’s oceans are on a sustainable path. Overfishing, plastic pollution, microplastics, climate change and forever chemicals continue to intensify. A cleaner beach does not mean a healthier sea. And by conflating the two, the UN is engaging in precisely the kind of bluewashing that erodes public trust and delays real action.

We came across the UN article and immediately thought of both Seaspiracy and Ocean. Not because they reject international cooperation, but because they remind us that celebrating progress should never become an excuse for understating failure.

Hope matters. So does honesty.

And we should never mistake a cleaned-up beach for a saved sea.