Ocean Vision Legal was founded on a simple belief.
The Ocean deserves stronger protection under the law.
We believe meaningful change happens when expertise is combined with partnership, and when law is used as a practical tool for protection. The Ocean connects all life on Earth. Yet despite its importance, many legal obligations designed to protect it remain underutilised, unenforced or overlooked. Ocean Vision Legal exists to help change that. We work alongside communities, organisations, governments and partners around the world to transform legal commitments into meaningful action and lasting protection.
We are an international legal organisation dedicated to advancing Ocean protection through litigation, Ocean Rights, guardianship and legal education. Our team brings together legal experts, policy specialists and Ocean advocates united by a shared commitment to accountability, justice and stewardship.
International and national laws already contain powerful obligations to protect the Ocean. Too often, those obligations remain words on paper rather than protections in practice.
Meaningful Ocean protection requires more than new commitments. It requires accountability, enforcement and legal mechanisms capable of creating lasting systemic change.
Lasting protection is built through partnership. We work alongside Ocean-dependent and Indigenous communities, recognising the importance of diverse knowledge systems, stewardship traditions and local leadership.
Through Ocean Rights, guardianship and legal innovation, we seek to advance a future where legal systems better reflect the interconnected relationship between humanity and the Ocean.
How We Work
Ocean Vision Legal brings together four interconnected areas of practice.
Using strategic legal action to strengthen accountability and enforce existing Ocean protection obligations.
Advancing legal and ethical frameworks that recognise the Ocean as more than a resource, supporting a more reciprocal relationship between humanity and the natural world.
Supporting Ocean-dependent and Indigenous communities through partnership, legal expertise and collaborative stewardship approaches.
Sharing specialised legal knowledge through education, training and practical tools that strengthen capacity for Ocean protection.
The Ocean issues we address.
We address a number of Ocean issue through different lenses. We are strategic in our actions, collaborative in our relationships and principled in our decision-making. We believe that lasting outcomes are shaped not only by what we achieve, but by the integrity of how we achieve them.
Strengthening legal frameworks that support thriving marine ecosystems, sustainable livelihoods and long-term Ocean stewardship.
Enforcing the obligation to protect and preserve the marine environment in the Southern Ocean.
Advancing precautionary and rights-based approaches to extractive activities that threaten vital and largely unexplored deep-sea ecosystems.
"We can create as many Ocean protection treaties as we want. If we do not enforce them, they remain promises rather than protection.”
Ocean Vision Legal was founded by Dr Anna von Rebay, an international environmental lawyer, litigator and legal strategist whose work has helped shape the emerging field of Ocean litigation.
Anna's work focuses on transforming Ocean protection obligations into enforceable legal action. Her experience spans litigation, international environmental law, Ocean governance and strategic legal advocacy across multiple jurisdictions.
Her legal scholarship, including *The Designation of Marine Protected Areas: A Legal Obligation*, has contributed to the growing recognition that protecting the marine environment is not simply a policy aspiration, but a legal responsibility.
Today, Anna works alongside communities, scientists, organisations and international coalitions to strengthen accountability and advance meaningful Ocean protection through law.
Support Our Work
The Ocean needs more than awareness. It needs accountability. Your support helps advance strategic legal action, achieve strengthen Ocean Rights and support Ocean-dependent and Indigenous communities working to protect the ecosystems they know best. Together, we can help turn legal obligation into lasting Ocean protection.
