“…For Europe's seas at least, data on driver, pressure, and state are relatively well developed and readily available at the international level (i.e., through the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES)) and at the centralized European level (i.e., through the European Commission) and to some extent on a regional sea level (e.g., through Baltic Marine Environment Protection CommissionHelsinki Commission (HELCOM)). Critically for the ecosystem approach, reliable spatial information linking environmental state changes to changes in human welfare (ecosystem services data) are in short supply (O'Higgins and Gilbert 2013), a factor recognized internationally as an impediment to ecosystem approach implementation (O'Higgins et al 2010, Jordan et al 2012, Raheem et al 2012). …”