Restoring and Protecting the world's large marine ecosystems: An engine for job creation and sustainable economic development

•LMEs provide trillions of USD in market and non-market goods and services to global economy and support millions of jobs.•A suite of well understood market and/or policy failures drive the six key challenges facing ocean sustainability.•A concerted global effort to restore and protect LMEs would create millions of new, and in many cases, well paying, jobs.

Some of the most significant threats to the sustainability of the world's 66 Large Marine Ecosystems (LME) - invasive species, coastal hypoxia, overfishing, marine debris and ocean acidification - are due to a combination of market and/or policy failures which cause these environmental externalities. A concerted global effort to remove these barriers would not only lead to dramatic improvements in ocean health and preservation of trillions of dollars in ocean-related goods and services and hundreds of millions of existing jobs, but also catalyze transformation across a range of ocean using and affecting sectors that would create millions of new, and in many cases, well paying, jobs for people across both the developed and developing world.