Hi Reddit, My name is Ben Halpern and I am a Professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UC Santa Barbara and Director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis. My research focuses on a range of issues and questions related to effective and efficient protection and sustainable use of marine species and habitats. My colleagues and I recently published an article titled Drivers and implications of change in global ocean health in the past five years in PLOS ONE. In this paper we report five years of annual assessment of the health of the ocean in all 220 coastal countries and territories around the world, tracking how 10 different broad goals are doing and what is driving changes in those goals. Most notably we found that many countries have improved their overall score by substantially increasing the amount of marine protected areas, while many other countries have seen scores decline due to unsustainable management of fisheries and other ocean resources. I will be answering your questions at 1pm ET from the ESA 2017 Annual Meeting – Ask Me Anything!