[riffraff]

I'm very curious to know what most of the IHO's work looks like.

I'm imagining they have a yearly conference and they have an agenda like

* check if there are new oceans

* check if older oceans have gone away

* should we rename the oceans?

* snacks

[mikro2nd]

From their website (https://iho.int/): "IHO works to ensure that all the world's seas, oceans and navigable waters are surveyed and charted, thereby supporting safety of navigation and the protection of the marine environment. It coordinates the activities of national hydrographic offices and sets standards in order to promote uniformity in nautical charts and documents. It issues survey best practices and provides guidelines to maximize the use of hydrographic information."

Lest you think this merely a paper-shuffling exercise, if there's a shipping accident, a huge amount of legal liability rides on the accuracy and up-to-date information in the charts. What these guys do underpins a huge amount of maritime law and international shipping. Definitely one of the really important, useful international orgs.

[danielvf]

A friend has led an ISO standardized list that you are likely to have used.

One out of every ten academics in the field is going to going to disagree with a given naming scheme. Some percentage of these are going to become obsessed with how you've gotten it wrong. They'll publish literal, old school, paper books with ISBN numbers accusing you and your organization of systematic murder of indigenous peoples, then constantly make edits to Wikipedia with their book as proof. It will take a decade or more to get it off Wikipedia because a "fact" with ISBN number trumps everything.

You'll wake up mornings to all caps, incoherent emails from people who sound like mental asylum inmates, but claim to be professor-doctors at distant universities. They hate you. You have ruined science.

You'll have deranged stalkers who unleash hatred on everything you ever write online from this time forward. As you type a blog post or a tweet, you'll hear their screaming voices in your head, commenting on every sentence you write.

Inside your international recognized naming group will be all the pettiness of the triviality of academic politics.

Outside, politicians and national interests will demand that your list be used as a weapon against their enemies. The offices of heads of state will call your boss if there are even rumors of you making a wrong call.

In the end, only a few strong will remain in charge, able to navigate the internal and external foes, able to read the coming storms by the falling of the leaves, and with a superhuman knowledge of the possible reactions the academics and the external powers who matter. If the world is lucky, a few good changes will slip into the list from time to time, provided they don't anger the wrong people. Inconvenient opinions will be silently stonewalled until such a time as world power shifts. The relentless killing knife of evolution will toss away anyone who does not play the game by its rules.

This list you are making isn't about truth. It's about power.

[Clewza313]

Point 3 there is enough to keep quite a few diplomats busy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Japan_naming_dispute

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf_naming_dispute

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Philippine_Sea

...and that's before even getting into maritime boundary/exclusive economic zone disputes.