"No news is good news.”

It’s a phrase that ­acknowledges that what we call news is often perceived to be bad. A recent study found that a quarter of Australian children ­exposed to negative stories about the ­environment were so troubled that they believed the world would come to an end in their ­lifetime.

When it comes to news about our oceans, that negative effect can be even more pronounced. But what if we all agreed to think differently about what’s happening in our watery world?

That’s the idea behind #OceanOptimism, a Twitter campaign ­started in 2014 by individuals from the ­Smithsonian Institution, the Zoological ­Society of ­London and the Monterey Bay ­Aquarium as a way to report “progress in ­solving marine-conservation ­challenges.” It has since reached an estimated 74 million Twitter users and has spread throughout all social-media platforms.

Users like the World Wildlife Fund share #OceanOptimism stories such as the return of sea grass to the Chesapeake Bay for the first time since the 1970s; ­Sylvia Earle’s Mission Blue shared the story that National Geographic would award $450,000 in prizes for ideas to help enforce the security of marine-protected areas. The Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal shared a CNN story about the world’s first plastic-free supermarket aisle.

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Optimism goes hand in hand with hope, and nobody understands that ­better than Earle, the ocean’s optimist-in-chief. ­Mission Blue promotes a network of global “Hope Spots,” marine-protected areas that now number nearly 100. “If we can get enough people sharing this message of caring for the oceans, imagine,” Earle says. “Imagine!”

“If you give up hope, what is there?” asks Drew Richardson, CEO of PADI, the largest dive-certification agency in the world, which is partnered with Mission Blue. “Hope is the anchor to the soul.”