The UN’s Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, the ‘Ocean Decade’, from 2021 to 2030 provides a common framework to ensure that ocean science can fully support countries to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Within this framework, tourism in general and coastal / maritime tourism in partcular, plays a central role. Within the Productive Ocean Lab tourism is addressed within the context of reaching the goal of a sustainable blue economy. The event programme can be found here. It is worth noting, that my university’s host-city Bremerhaven is very strongly represented in this initiative with practically all of its scientific institutions contributing content and hosting events. Our Bremerhaven University of Applied Science is also participating and I am honoured to be joining as a speaker in the Lab’s core event, joining the discussion on: “Where are we now and why we need to cooperate?” A rather obvious question… which like many ‘obvious things’ is neither obvious, nor easy.