iMarine is an open and collaborative initiative that will establish a data infrastructure to support the Ecosystem Approach to fisheries management and conservation of marine living resources. iMarine empowers practitioners and policy makers from multiple scientific fields such as fisheries, biodiversity and ocean observation. The iMarine infrastructure will ensure that otherwise dispersed and heterogeneous data is available to all stakeholder communities through a shared virtual environment that brings together multidisciplinary data sources, supports cross-cutting scientific analysis, and assists communication. iMarine (Data e-Infrastructure Initiative for Fisheries Management and Conservation of Marine Living Resources) is co-funded by the European Commission under Framework Programme 7. The project was launched in November 2011 and will end in April 2014. The final aim of iMarine is to contribute to sustainable environmental management with invaluable direct or indirect benefits to the future of our planet, from climate change mitigation and marine biodiversity loss containment to poverty alleviation and disaster risk reduction.