The IMBeR West Pacific Symposium: Changing West Pacific Ocean: Science and Sustainability was held on 22-25 November 2021 in Shanghai. This online event drew more than 900 participants and more than 160 presentations to provide new scientific observation results and perspectives on the changing marine biosphere in the West Pacific Ocean and its neighboring Indian and Southern oceans. It also brought many notable success stories about how scientific research activities empower us to cope with changing oceans due to global warming and harness the ocean’s wealth sustainably. The symposium topics covered coastal blue carbon, coral reefs, dried small fish, ecosystem-social interactions in the coastal sea, marine biogeochemistry and biodiversity in Indo-Pacific Region, marine-extreme events, oceanic top predators, tropical ocean ecosystem, and ocean interventions. It forged a camaraderie among the scientists and stakeholders interested in the West Pacific and its neighboring oceans from more than 70 countries.

We are delighted to announce that the Deep-Sea Research II special issue, two volumes, stemming from the IMBeR West Pacific Symposium are under development (Fig. 1). All presenters at the symposium are kindly entitled to submit manuscripts for the special issue. The manuscripts generated through/by/from/during the West Pacific Symposium are all welcomed according to the IMBeR publication policy. If you have developed manuscripts that fit into the Symposium over the course of time and are interested in submitting ones, please follow the submission guidelines here or contact IMBeR IPO-China (imber@ecnu.edu.cn).