Abstract
Interdisciplinarity in marine sciences is essential to address complex ocean challenges. Traditional disciplinary approaches are insufficient to link knowledge, decision-making, and action. Drawing on recent developments in marine education and research, we argue that institutions must rethink training, organization, and governance. Strengthening interdisciplinarity is key to connecting science with policy and industry and to supporting effective and equitable ocean governance.
Similar content being viewed by others
The ocean crisis demands a new kind of science
Towards equity and justice in ocean sciences
Risks of competing discourses of scientific responsibility in global ocean futures
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Paul Treguer from Université de Bretagne Occidentale (UBO), Gilles Lericolais from the European Marine Board (EMB), IFREMER and CIESM, Manon Rocco, LCE-AMU, and Flore Nonchez from AMU for reviewing an early version of the MS. This work received support from the French government under the France 2030 investment plan, as part of the Initiative d’Excellence of Aix-Marseille Université A*MIDEX, Institute for Ocean Sciences (grant no. AMX-21-IET-016).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Reprints and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Thomas, S., Tribot, AS., Carson, S.G. et al. Interdisciplinarity in marine sciences is key to addressing ocean challenges.
npj Ocean Sustain (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44183-026-00209-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44183-026-00209-x
Source: Ecology - nature.com
