SMEA Professor Patrick Christie recently attended an international workshop in Kiel, Germany hosted by Future Earth to highlight the importance of human dimensions ocean science and links to policy making. The “Workshop on the Development of an Integrative Ocean Research Network (Future Earth Oceans Knowledge-Action Network)” assembled around 100 representatives from several existing academic and practitioner communities dealing with ocean sustainability. It sought to scope new international transdisciplinary ocean research activities that could be pursued within an integrative ocean research network over the coming years. The results from the discussions will be published in a report due out in February 2017.