iMarine (2011-2014), was a project funded by the European Commission under Framework Programme 7, INFRA- 2011-1.2.2: Data Infrastructure for eScience, aimed to establish and operate an e-infrastructure supporting the principles of the Ecosystem Approach to fisheries management and conservation of marine living resources. The last years, the marine ecosystem has been affected by many natural and socio-economic phenomena like natural disasters, human interventions (like fisheries), etc, that were making real changes to the original marine ecosystem. These events forced policy makers, environmental institutions, operators etc. to establish a dialogue to start formulating strategies aimed at the conservation and sustainability of the whole ecosystem structure and its properties. This interaction has been started, but with poor results: a concrete Ecosystem Approach had not been yet adopted as was documented by the high number of existing Regional Fishery Management Organisations, Regional Seas Programmes, Ocean Biodiversity Initiatives, etc. who were still adopting their own policies, terminologies, methodologies, and tools, and rarely cross over interdisciplinary boundaries, limiting the exchange of ideas and results with other communities, fragmenting understandings, reducing policy effectiveness and slowing down learning for adaptive management. Moreover to speed up the process of adoption of the Ecosystem Approach the establishment of one or more Communities of Practice is fundamental: interconnecting scientists, managers, lawyers, industry leaders, unions, fishery operators, etc. was the key to rapidly develop requirements and recommendations for new services and tools. The main purpose of iMarine was to bridge this gap through the development of the i-Marine Data e- infrastructure. This e-Infrastructure fostered the cohesion among different Ecosystem Approach Communities of Practise (EA-CoP) reducing costs of its multidisciplinary policy creation, scientific and social learning activities and facilitating the emergence and solidification of EA-CoP. Moreover, providing a common layer to connect existing data infrastructures via established and standardized interfaces, implementing new features and value-added tools used by practitioners in fishery management and marine living resources conservation allowed the creation of a unique reference point for all EA-CoP around the world.