The ocean moderates anthropogenic climate change at the cost of profound alterations of its physics, chemistry, ecology, and services. Here, we evaluate and compare the risks of impacts on marine and coastal ecosystems—and the goods and services they provide—for growing cumulative carbon emissions under two contrasting emissions scenarios. The current emissions trajectory would rapidly and significantly alter many ecosystems and the associated services on which humans heavily depend. A reduced emissions scenario—consistent with the Copenhagen Accord's goal of a global temperature increase of less than 2°C—is much more favorable to the ocean but still substantially alters important marine ecosystems and associated goods and services. The management options to address ocean impacts narrow as the ocean warms and acidifies. Consequently, any new climate regime that fails to minimize ocean impacts would be incomplete and inadequate.

The term Blue Carbon (BC) was first coined a decade ago to describe the disproportionately large contribution of coastal vegetated ecosystems to global carbon sequestration. The role of BC in climate change mitigation and adaptation has now reached international prominence. To help prioritise future research, we assembled leading experts in the field to agree upon the top-ten pending questions in BC science. Understanding how climate change affects carbon accumulation in mature BC ecosystems and during their restoration was a high priority.Controversial questions included the role of carbonate and macroalgae in BC cycling, and the degree to which greenhouse gases are released following disturbance of BC ecosystems. Scientists seek improved precision of the extent of BC ecosystems; techniques to determine BC provenance; understanding of the factors that influence sequestration in BC ecosystems, with the corresponding value of BC; and the management actions that are effective in enhancing this value. Overall this overview provides a comprehensive road map for the coming decades on future research in BC science.

Consistency in conservation Marine protected areas (MPAs) are now well established globally as tools for conservation, for enhancing marine biodiversity, and for promoting sustainable fisheries. That said, which regions are labeled as MPAs varies substantially, from those that full protect marine species and prohibit human extraction to those that permit everything from intensive fishing to mining. This inconsistency can in some cases inhibit both conservation and quantifying the proportion of the marine environment that is truly protected. Grorud-Colvert et al . review the consistency of MPAs and propose a framework by which levels of protection can be evaluated and improved. —SNV

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The damaging effects of human activities on marine ecosystems suggest that a major shift is required in the way marine resources and systems are viewed and used by individuals. Identifying how to engage society in this shift is an ongoing debate. This includes strengthening the positive connections between society and the sea. Currently, the major focus of research in this area is on coastal areas, whilst the limited work on public perceptions of the subtidal UK seas shows opinions characterized by pessimism, disgust, shame and sadness. This study uses an internet survey (n = 1047) to investigate UK public perceptions of subtidal species marine health and assess whether it is possible to build more positive connections between society and the sea. The analysis shows pessimistic perceptions of subtidal diversity, but highest interest in traditionally charismatic Highlights (3-5 bullet points, maximum 85 characters, including spaces, per bullet point)  Society are an essential contributor to achieving marine conservation goals  Pessimistic perceptions of UK seas are a barrier to engagement  Survey identifies opportunities of positive connections between society and the sea  Experience appears important in the connections between society and the sea  Ecological concepts of marine health were widely selected by respondents

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ABSTRACT1. Marine ecosystems provide critically important goods and services to society, and hence their accelerated degradation underpins an urgent need to take rapid, ambitious and informed decisions regarding their conservation and management.2. The capacity, however, to generate the detailed field data required to inform conservation planning at appropriate scales is limited by time and resource consuming methods for collecting and analysing field data at the large scales required.3. The 'Catlin Seaview Survey', described here, introduces a novel framework for large-scale monitoring of coral reefs using high-definition underwater imagery collected using customized underwater vehicles in combination with computer vision and machine learning. This enables quantitative and geo-referenced outputs of coral reef features such as habitat types, benthic composition, and structural complexity (rugosity) to be generated across multiple kilometre-scale transects with a spatial resolution ranging from 2 to 6 m 2 .4. The novel application of technology described here has enormous potential to contribute to our understanding of coral reefs and associated impacts by underpinning management decisions with kilometre-scale measurements of reef health.5. Imagery datasets from an initial survey of 500 km of seascape are freely available through an online tool called the Catlin Global Reef Record. Outputs from the image analysis using the technologies described here will be updated on the online repository as work progresses on each dataset.6. Case studies illustrate the utility of outputs as well as their potential to link to information from remote sensing. The potential implications of the innovative technologies on marine resource management and conservation are also discussed, along with the accuracy and efficiency of the methodologies deployed.

To meet the Convention on Biological Diversity0 s Aichi Target 11 on marine biodiversity protection and Aichi Target 6 on sustainable fisheries by 2020, as well as the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 on food security and SDG 14 on oceans by 2030, there is an urgent need to rethink how best to reconcile nature conservation and sustainable development. 4. It is recognized that aquaculture is an important activity in terms of sustainable development. It can play a role in providing food security, poverty alleviation and economic resilience, in particular for MPA local communities, and contribute to wild stock enhancement, as an alternative to overfishing and for providing services to the ecosystem.5. This study showed that there is a need from both aquaculture and MPA sides for clarity of objectives and willingness for open and extensive dialogue. The paper concludes by describing a number of tools and methods for supporting greater synergies between aquaculture and MPAs.6. The results from this work have already helped to build a common understanding between conservation and aquaculture and initiate a rapprochement for increasing synergies.KEYWORDS aquaculture, ecosystem approach, environmental impact assessment, littoral, marine protected area, ocean, sublittoral