About Marine Conservation Society

The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) is dedicated to the protection of the marine environment and its wildlife. "Seas Fit For Life" is the ultimate goal of the Marine Conservation Society, which works on issues about which everyone cares. These include damage to delicate coral reefs; species protection; sewage pollution and the threats it poses to health; over fishing and mismanagement of our precious ocean resources.

Our history

The work of the MCS began during the Underwater Conservation Year in 1977 when a number of prominent members of the diving community, who were passionate environmentalists and marine biologists, became very concerned that there was no UK organisation dedicated to speaking up for the conservation of our seas and marine wildlife. As divers, they knew the dreadful state of Britain’s seas and the problems that our marine wildlife was facing.

Professor David Bellamy, with diving colleagues, started the Underwater Conservation Society in 1979, a membership organisation initially focusing on project work for divers ‘Diving with a Purpose’. They also worked to stop competitive spear fishing and in 1981 to obtain provision for Marine Nature Reserves in the Wildlife and Countryside Act.

Realising that conservation of the marine environment and its wildlife was a challenge that should not be faced solely by divers, the Society was renamed the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) in 1983 to encourage the support of anyone who was concerned about the marine environment whatever their occupation or particular interest.

Supporters now include people from a wide range of backgrounds who all share a wish to see healthy oceans where wildlife thrives and a desire to return to the times when a walk on a clean beach was one of life’s simple pleasures.

MCS is a registered charity, and is proud to have the patronage of His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, as the Society’s President.

MCS has become a recognised authority on marine and coastal conservation, species and habitat protection and environmental education. MCS has an outstanding record of success over twenty years of affecting change but there is still much to do to safeguard our marine environment and its wildlife.