Future Seas 2030: pathways to sustainability for the UN Ocean Decade and beyond

The United Nations has declared 2021-2030 as the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. The objective is to motivate international efforts aimed at improving ocean health by providing the science necessary for sustainable development of the oceans-to underpin "The ocean we need for the future we want". This coordinated effort is urgently needed as demands for natural resources continue to escalate (Jouffray et al. 2020), and society is faced with managing these demands in the face of unprecedented environmental changes (IPCC 2019). However, major transformations are needed at all scales to create a sustainable future, and these are reliant on more than 'just' additional data and knowledge. Moreover, public support for science appears at an all-time low (Kreps and Kriner 2020) and the science-policy gap is growing (Cvitanovic and Hobday 2018). "The ocean we need for the future we want" requires scientists and decision-makers to identify how to facilitate the use of available science and encourage the uptake of behaviours and the implementation of policies-at individual, local and global scales-that will leverage greater environmental benefit.