The ocean plays a critical role in supporting human well-being, from providing food, livelihoods and recreational opportunities to regulating the global climate. Sustainable management aimed at maintaining the flow of a broad range of benefits from the ocean requires a comprehensive and quantitative method to measure and monitor the health of coupled human–ocean systems. We created an index comprising ten diverse public goals for a healthy coupled human–ocean system and calculated the index for every coastal country. Globally, the overall index score was 60 out of 100 (range 36–86), with developed countries generally performing better than developing countries, but with notable exceptions. Only 5% of countries scored higher than 70, whereas 32% scored lower than 50. The index provides a powerful tool to raise public awareness, direct resource management, improve policy and prioritize scientific research.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

The rapid increase in the science and implementation of marine protected areas (MPAs) around the world in the past 15 years is now being followed by similar increases in the science and application of marine ecosystem-based management (EBM). Despite important overlaps and some common goals, these two approaches have remained either separated in the literature and in conservation and management efforts or treated as if they are one and the same. In the cases when connections are acknowledged, there is often little assessment of if or how well MPAs can achieve specific EBM goals. Here we start by critically evaluating commonalities and differences between MPAs and EBM. Next, we use global analyses to show where and how much notake marine reserves can be expected to contribute to EBM goals, specifically by reducing the cumulative impacts of stressors on ocean ecosystems. These analyses revealed large stretches of coastal oceans where reserves can play a major role in reducing cumulative impacts and thus improving overall ocean condition, at the same time highlighting the limitations of marine reserves as a single tool to achieve comprehensive EBM. Ultimately, better synergies between these two burgeoning approaches provide opportunities to greatly benefit ocean health. Although few countries have yet to come close to meeting these goals (1), local and federal governments and conservation organizations around the world have already created or are in the process of creating hundreds of new MPAs. Interest in using MPAs as a conservation strategy is supported in part by a growing body of science showing the conservation benefits from no-take reserves (2, 3), and made more urgent by the increasing recognition of the dire condition of most of the world's oceans (4, 5). Despite the success of these efforts, it is also clear that MPAs are only part of the solution to protecting and restoring ocean health. MPAs cannot address all of the existing and emerging threats to marine systems, most notably landbased sources of pollution and threats from global climate change, nor can they achieve all management goals. MPAs typically support a single societal value-conservation-although they are also commonly established with the aim of benefiting fisheries. There is a growing range of objectives for ocean use and protection that extends beyond conservation and fisheries, and these different perspectives need to be included in management plans. In particular, we need to ensure that human well-being is part of our definition of ocean health if marine conservation is going to be effective in the long term.In response to the increasing diversity and intensity of ocean uses and associated impacts, and the recognition that we need to more carefully and explicitly include human dimensions in our efforts to understand and manage the oceans, there has been a recent push toward ecosystem-based management (EBM) (6-8).Emerging from this development are numerous variations on the EBM theme, including area-based management, ecosystem-based fisher...