It is becoming increasingly evident that the integrity and health of marine and coastal ecosystems is crucial for people’s wellbeing. We benefit from the wide variety of goods and services these ecosystems provide. For instance, marine and coastal ecosystems can act as nurseries for fish species we harvest, attenuate the intensity of storms thereby reducing their devastating impacts on coastal infrastructure and people, and act as pollution buffers and purify water. Marine and coastal ecosystems also provide people with raw materials and food, contribute to carbon sequestration and storage, and offer benefits to tourism, recreation, education and research. But despite their importance, marine and coastal ecosystems are degrading or disappearing altogether in many places around the world, mostly as a result of direct or indirect human pressures. MaCoBioS worked in six marine and coastal ecosystems (mangroves, coral reefs, kelp forests, maërl beds, seagrass meadows, saltmarshes) across three ecoregions (Northern Europe, Mediterranean and Caribbean) to better understand their ecological condition and how this affects the ecosystem services they provide. If you’d like to learn more about the ecosystems we studied please explore the following StoryMaps: