Steven Degraer started his scientific career in benthic ecology of intertidal and shallow subtidal temperate marine ecosystems at Ghent University. After his PhD research (1999), he started to broaden his research focus: from temperate to tropical ecosystems, from sandy to rocky coasts, from benthos to avifauna and from fundamental to applied research. Marine management, focusing on nature conservation and sustainable use and exploitation of the marine resources, has always been the red line through his work, which finally brought him to the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS) in 2008. He is now coordinating RBINS’s Marine Ecology and Management (MARECO) team with a broad expertise on marine mammals and seabirds, rocky shore fauna and invasive species, and underwater noise, embedded in an ecosystem management context. He coordinated/s several national and international research projects on the environmental impacts of human activities, e.g. offshore wind farms for which he takes the scientific coordinating role in Belgian waters and for which he is often consulted in the framework of marine management in general, and more specifically marine spatial planning in Belgium and abroad. He further holds a research and teaching guest professorship at the Biology Department of Ghent University (Belgium).