The increasingly intensive use of our seas makes protecting the marine environment more and more important. This applies just as much in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea as it does across all of the world’s oceans. While key progress has been made on reducing marine pollution in recent decades, other problems continue to become increasingly widespread. Overfishing, plastic waste in the sea, fishing and deep sea mining in ever more remote marine areas, renewable energy generation, underwater noise and shipping pose growing threats to many marine species and habitats.