This Future Science Brief outlines recent advances, challenges and opportunities for big data to support marine science. To develop solutions to key societal challenges, there is an increasing need for more complex, transdisciplinary analyses across traditionally siloed disciplines and sectors. To achieve these goals, we need to move towards increased digitalization and the adoption of big data in marine science. The publication identifies overarching challenges and recommendations within the categories of data acquisition, data handling and management, service interoperability, computing infrastructures and data accessibility, data sharing, big data analytics, and training networks and collaboration. These are explored through topics and case studies on climate science and marine biogeochemistry, habitat mapping for marine conservation, marine biological observations, and pest control in the aquaculture sector.

The year 2019 was one of great achievements for the European Marine Board with several important events and publications such as the launch of our Flagship publication “Navigating the Future V” (NFV), and the organization of the EurOCEAN 2019 Conference. EMB also focused on the preparation of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and the forthcoming Horizon Europe, which will both be of great influence to steer marine science further in the EU and beyond. Find out all about our activities in the EMB Annual Report 2019.