Monaco’s Mission Grèce blends science, diplomacy, and education in quest for an answer
The Nasdaq trading floor in New York City is hardly where one expects to hear about monk seals or microplastics, or meet heads of states. Yet on 23 September, His Serene Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco rang the opening bell to announce that his foundation had raised $73 million for the ReOcean Fund, a long-term initiative designed to support companies tackling marine pollution, restoration, and data innovation. The following day, he received the Foreign Policy Association’s highest honour for ocean advocacy, a recognition of decades of sustained engagement and his ability to turn scientific urgency into global attention.
And on 7 October, Monaco’s dynamic and visionary ruler swaps the business suit for a captain’s jacket when he boards MODX 70, a wind- and solar-powered catamaran, in Alonissos, Greece. Here, he meets the crew of some 20 scientists, researchers, engineers, and stakeholders of Mission Grèce. The five week voyage, which set sail on September 25 in Monaco, is the inaugural expedition of the new Mission Mediterranée project managed by Monaco Explorations. Like for future voyages over the 2025-2030 project span, one of the declared goals of Mission Grèce is to build a knowledge base that links field data with practical management, awareness campaigns, and policy engagement in an effort to halt and reverse ecosystem decline.
The 21-metre vessel MODX 70 is custom-equipped as an innovative floating laboratory. While her crew can perform sophisticated marine scientific research on board, equal emphasis is put on engaging with the local population and partners in the ports of call. The catamaran will visit Athens, Alonissos, Volos, and Syros before returning to Athens to wrap up this first mission and then returning to Monaco at the end of October 2025.
The contrast between Wall Street and the remote Sporades islands is striking, yet it underscores a central truth: protecting the Mediterranean depends on capital as well as fieldwork, global statecraft as well as local engagement. And Monaco is well-positioned to link all of these.
Greece as a Launchpad
The choice of Greece for MODX 70’s virgin voyage was deliberate. The country features biodiversity hotspots, traditional fishing villages, and urbanised coasts converge in remarkably close proximity. The Sporades islands, home to the Northern Sporades National Marine Park, were chosen for the campaign’s opening stage not only because they shelter the last significant population of the Mediterranean monk seal, once teetering on the brink of extinction, but also because they exemplify the broader pressures facing the entire basin. Rich ecosystems coexist alongside the persistent impacts of tourism, shipping, and climate stress.
The Sporades themselves form a mosaic of forested hillsides, stone-built villages, and limestone cliffs cut by deep coves. These cliffs provide sanctuary for monk seals, which spend daylight hours ashore before slipping into the sea at dusk to hunt. Rangers from the Hellenic conservation agency patrol the coastline, balancing protection of these elusive animals with the needs of local fishers, whose livelihoods depend on the sea.
This precarious equilibrium is easily disturbed. Along with research, education is therefore central to the mission. Workshops in island ports allow students, local staff, and rangers to gain hands-on contact with the plankton that sustain life in the sea. Islanders witness firsthand how traditional experience in fishing and navigation can intersect with modern research to inform conservation decisions. In the evening hours, divers quietly explore deeper waters, measuring oxygen, acidity, and temperature fluctuations, while samples are sifted for microplastics, revealing the reach of human impact even in remote bays.
By combining centuries of local maritime knowledge with high-tech scientific instruments such as plankton mappers, BRUVS, and autonomous probes, Mission Grèce fosters a generation of guardians capable of sustaining monitoring programs long after the expedition departs. Conservation becomes a shared community practice grounded in science, ensuring long-term stewardship.
A Sea Laboratory
The MODX 70 is built for both research and demonstration. Inflatable sails and solar panels push it forward with minimal emissions, while its deck space hosts an array of scientific modules.
Plankto-Med maps microscopic organisms that form the foundation of the marine food web. BRUVS, remote video systems baited to attract fish, provide data on species diversity without extractive sampling. Autonomous probes record oxygen, acidity, and temperature levels. Microplastics are filtered and analysed, giving a picture of pollution carried even to the most isolated coves. Numerous other scientific projects evaluate current state, health, and recovery potential of the Mediterranean Sea.
Video courtesy Monaco Info
The Wider Mediterranean Context
If Mission Grèce can demonstrate successful conservation in these waters, those lessons could travel across the Mediterranean basin, which touches 22 countries with an extraordinary diversity of political and economic systems. Protecting these waters cannot be imposed from above; it must be built through coalition and shared responsibility. Monaco has long positioned itself as a convening power: small enough to be non-threatening, yet equipped with the scientific authority of its Oceanographic Institute and the philanthropic weight of the Prince Albert II Foundation.
The Principality’s role is reflected in initiatives such as BeMed, fighting plastic pollution since 2015; The MedFund, financing marine protected areas; and the Monk Seal Alliance, established in 2019.
Mission Grèce operates within the framework of the UN’s 30×30 biodiversity target, which aims to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030. Today, 8.33% of Mediterranean waters are classified as protected, but only 1.5% have management plans capable of ensuring meaningful conservation. Mission Grèce seeks not only to improve these figures but to show that properly enforced protection can generate tangible ecological and social benefits.
Environmental Stakes
The Mediterranean is a sea of paradox. It is semi-enclosed, and water exchange with the Atlantic takes nearly a century, meaning pollutants, warming, and chemical inputs persist for decades. The region is warming roughly 20% faster than the global average, and episodic heatwaves are already causing mass mortality among fixed invertebrates such as gorgonians. Human pressures compound the challenge: some 173 million people live within a narrow coastal band of five to ten kilometres, tourism accounts for nearly 30% of global travel, and maritime traffic, coastal artificialisation, and industrialisation have reshaped habitats throughout the basin.
There is also relentless plastic pollution, with hundreds of thousands of tons entering the Mediterranean annually. These plastics break down into microplastics that infiltrate food chains and accumulate in marine organisms. Warming waters attract exotic species who in turn disrupt established ancient ecosystems. Essential habitats such as Posidonia seagrass beds and lagoons that serve as nurseries for fish have been destroyed or degraded. Overfishing is pervasive, with nearly 58% of Mediterranean fish stocks classified as overexploited.
Yet the sea shows remarkable resilience. Monk seals in the Sporades are slowly reclaiming historical territories, groupers are returning to French marine reserves, and corals in Italian sanctuaries are demonstrating signs of recovery. These instances reveal that when marine protection is applied effectively, ecosystems respond, and conservation can deliver both ecological and economic benefits, from sustainable fishing to eco-tourism. Mission Grèce seeks to capture these dynamics with data detailed enough to guide management and persuasive enough to inform policy.
The Med and the Grimaldis
For Prince Albert II, Mission Grèce extends a long-standing environmental commitment. He has participated directly in Arctic and Antarctic expeditions, intervened at international climate summits, and led initiatives such as Monaco Explorations’ Yersin, a three-year voyage rediscovering species thought lost and surveying threatened coral reefs. Parallel initiatives by his foundation have championed polar science, renewable energy, and biodiversity diplomacy.
His engagement is heartfelt. Certainly, a reigning monarch’s presence on board a zero-emission research vessel draws attention, converting visibility into leverage for conservation and diplomacy. But like Monaco’s other initiatives, Mission Grèce seeks impact rather than personal acclaim, turning the prince’s presence into momentum for science, education, and policy engagement.
The Principality’s sovereign also continues a long family tradition that started with his great-great-grandfather Prince Albert I, who was an earnest ocean scientist and researcher. His presence is still felt on a large scale through the Musée Océanographique which he founded in 1906. It houses one of the most influential collections and mounts groundbreaking exhibitions on maritime topics, like the current immersive “2050” show. And Prince Rainier III, the current ruler’s late father, left his imprint on the political side by ratifying several global ocean protection frameworks and international treaties that are still in force today.
From Markets to Islands
The juxtaposition of New York and Alonissos matters. Although the money raised by the prince in New York does not finance this expedition, the ringing of the Nasdaq bell is a reminder that environmental recovery requires both capital and fieldwork. A successful project could provide a model for other stressed seas worldwide, demonstrating that precise science, local knowledge, and sustained education can work together to restore ecological balance.
Whether the Mediterranean can heal remains an open question. What Mission Grèce offers is a disciplined experiment, visible to the world, that invites coastal nations and communities to test new approaches. For the sea that has carried myth and empire, that has linked cultures for three thousand years, the answer will resonate far beyond its shores.
MISSION TECHNOLOGY & PROJECTS EXPLAINED
Technology:
- MODX 70 Catamaran: Wind and solar powered with inflatable Oceanwings sails, hydrogenerators, minimal emissions
- BRUVS: Remote video systems baited to attract fish for species diversity data
- BGC-Argo Floats: Autonomous underwater robots diving to 2,000m measuring temperature, salinity, pH, oxygen, nitrates, chlorophyll-a
- SailingBox: Portable devices testing low-cost sensors for pH, oxygen, temperature, salinity, and pCO2 levels
- Curiosity Microscopes: Educational tools revealing marine plankton to students and public
Scientific Projects:
- Plankto-Med: Mapping microscopic marine organisms using simple instruments, building baseline ecosystem data
- MAR4PAST: Evaluating marine forests of brown algae, returning to sites studied 15 years ago around Alonissos, Piperi and Gyaros
- EXOFISH-MED: Training Greek marine park managers to identify exotic fish species using standardized protocols
- Microplastics Study: Analyzing how marine forests capture microplastics and nanoplastics
- Bathymetric Mapping: Participatory collection of seafloor depth data to improve marine charts
All images as credited; lead image Départ Monaco 25.09.2025 © Frédéric Nebinger | Palais princier
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