The somewhat confronting content of S3, E9, 'Sandy Beaches at Risk' is the result of research by Professor Omar Defeo at the Laboratory of Marine Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, University of Uruguay. More than a third of the world's ice-free ocean coastline is composed of sandy beaches, which function as social-ecological systems in that the quality of services provided by the ecosystem benefit humans, and human activities affect the ecological side of the equation, often adversely, with urban and industrial developments moving seawards. Coastal recession, driven by sea level rise, could well result in the extinction of almost half of the world's sandy beaches by the end of this century, yet beaches are typically prone to weak governance.   Intensive stock-rearing, over-fertilisation of crops, sewage discharges and coastal aquaculture cause eutrophic conditions in which dense growths of plant life deplete the supply of oxygen, leading to higher animal mortality and forming golden and green algal tides. These, together with Harmful Algal Blooms  (HABs, red tides), impact fisheries, causing unemployment and lost income throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. There is a pressing need to increase the monitoring of sandy beaches, combining human observation and interpretation of satellite images. LifeWatch ERIC’s virtual research environment is the ideal instrument to  bring together data from around the world ,to establish holistic management practices with greater attention to adaptive and participatory governance under changing and uncertain climate conditions.