Today, the European Marine Board held a joint workshop with JPI Oceans at the European Maritime Day in Gothenburg, entitled Seas and Oceans Research in Europe: Addressing critical societal and policy challenges. The workshop, moderated by Niall McDonough, Marine Board Executive Scientific Secretary, addressed the question of how seas and oceans research can tackle European societal challenges, with chairs of Marine Board working groups presenting recent foresight studies. Dr Patrick Roose (MUMM, Belgium) launched a position paper on marine chemical pollution that critically evaluates current monitoring practices and emerging chemicals of concern in marine environments. Prof. Dr Frank Oliver Glöckner (Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Germany) presented the new Marine Board position paper on marine microbial diversity as a pre-release to tie in with International Biodiversity Day. The position paper, entitled, Marine Microbial Diversity in Ecosystem Functioning and Environmental Change, provides an overview of the European marine microbial research state-of-the-art and a gives a set of high-level research recommendations to guide research in the medium term (to 2020).