Plastic products are everywhere in daily life in the United States. Yet the economic, environmental and health costs of plastic to society reach up to $1.1 trillion per year—and that’s likely an underestimate.

The interactions—including conflict and competition—between coastal small-scale fishing (SSF) communities and large-scale, distant-water fishing (DWF) fleets have garnered increasing attention in recent decades. Coastal states, such as Liberia, employ a variety of access arrangements to license foreign fishing vessels to access fisheries resources within their exclusive economic zones. This paper contributes a case study that assesses the socioeconomic impacts of distant-water trawl vessels on Liberia’s SSF and fisheries-dependent coastal communities.

Building on lessons from the Illuminating Hidden Harvests initiative, the authors identify systemic changes and specific indicators needed to fill data gaps in women's contributions to small-scale fisheries .

As ocean industrialization accelerates, corporate transparency is increasingly seen as critical to improve governance. Yet little is known about how firms disclose their impacts on marine ecosystems. This study addresses that gap through a content analysis of sustainability and annual reports from 75 of the largest companies across 8 sectors of the ocean economy.

The global ocean economy is currently undergoing profound transformation. In the face of multiple challenges, the issue of sustainable ocean development has become a central concern for the international community. As a major maritime nation and a key player in the global ocean economy, China has responded to the call for sustainable development and is accelerating its transition toward a more sustainable blue economy (SBE).

Prior research suggests that the global financial services sector could influence the sustainability of the ocean economy, particularly with better information on companies’ externalities (Barbier 2023; Sumaila et al. 2021; Jouffray et al. 2019). This brief summarizes preliminary, non-peer-reviewed findings from ongoing research that explores the potential influence of the financial sector on the sustainability of the ocean economy. It aims to contribute to and inform policy discussions emerging from the United Nations Oceans Conference in June 2025.

Nature Portfolio has launched a new collection showcasing small-scale fisheries research conducted by the Illuminating Hidden Harvests (IHH) initiative.

Small-scale fisheries play a significant but overlooked role in global fisheries production and are key to addressing hunger and malnutrition while supporting livelihoods around the world, according to research featured on the cover of Nature. The data and methodology for this paper were produced within the framework of the Illuminating Hidden Harvests initiative conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Duke University, and WorldFish.

We provide the first global assessment of the status of preferential access areas (PAAs), a relatively understudied policy tool to govern small-scale fisheries. We find 44 countries, most of them of low or low-middle income, have established a total of 63 PAAs encompassing 3% of continental shelf area worldwide.

Despite international enthusiasm, private-sector finance for sustainable development and the blue economy still makes up a very small percentage of global investment. Repurposed bonds and debt-for-nature swaps have gained support with policymakers, international organizations, and investors keen to align their investment with global goals and borrowing countries with large ocean domains seeking new sources of finance.