This piece was first published in  Mongabay . I’m in Nice, France, this week attending the   U.N. Conference to Support the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14 : Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development. If my   Tiaki Moana   colleagues have any say over it, stars and lighthouses are going to be a main topic of conversation here this week. Let me explain. During the  Tiaki Moana  conference in Tahiti last April, we discussed how maritime navigators use many tools to cross the ocean, ranging from stars in the night sky to lighthouses. Olivier Chassot, an official with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), kicked off a discussion of how  marine protected areas  (MPAs) and  marine other effective conservation measures  (mOECMs) — policy tools used by the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity to protect the ocean — are like lighthouses and stars, respe...