Fisheries have long dominated the agenda of marine social sciences. For most of the twentieth century, studies tended to focus on ethnographies of fishing communities and case studies of local management, and often located in the Global South. Research activities were fragmented, remained academic, and had little impact on policy (Symes et al. 2019). The last 25 years witnessed changes, with increasing focus on fisheries management studies in the Global North, and a growing, yet sometimes hesitant, recognition from policy-makers that social sciences have an important role to play in showing interactions between marine policies on the one hand and fishers' behaviour, compliance, communities and heritage on the other (Symes and Hoefnagel 2010; Urquhart et al. 2011). At the same time, significant changes are taking place in terms of marine use, with coastal and offshore waters no longer being the exclusive domain of fishers. Nature conservation and development, land reclamation, tourism, aquaculture, shipping, mineral extraction and, more recently, renewable energy production particularly through offshore wind farms are putting increasing stress on the oceans, on traditional users and on governance. So does climate change. Considering the current focus on Blue Growth or the Blue Economy (Arbo et al. 2018; Mulazzani and Malorgio * Nathalie A.