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“Operational Approaches” have been more and more widely developed and used for providing marine data and information service for different socio-economic sectors of the Blue Growth and to advance knowledge about the marine environment. The objective of operational oceanographic research is to develop and improve the efficiency, timeliness, robustness and product quality of this approach. This white paper aims to address key scientific challenges and research priorities for the development of operational oceanography in Europe for the next 5–10 years. Knowledge gaps and deficiencies are identified in relation to common scientific challenges in four EuroGOOS knowledge areas: European Ocean Observations, Modelling and Forecasting Technology, Coastal Operational Oceanography and Operational Ecology. The areas “European Ocean Observations” and “Modelling and Forecasting Technology” focus on the further advancement of the basic instruments and capacities for European operational oceanography, while “Coastal Operational Oceanography” and “Operational Ecology” aim at developing new operational approaches for the corresponding knowledge areas.

For some time now, the private sector has been namechecked by marine observatories and public data-sharing initiatives as a target-user of their resources and/or as a potential source of data, with little concomitant targeted development by these initiatives to facilitate this. Experiences reveal that the current business-as-usual scenario is not effective for marine observatories and public data-sharing initiatives to actively engage industry, either as users or providers of data. These guidelines explore some of the issues which hinder effective engagement of industry with marine observatories and related data-sharing initiatives, and formulate possible solutions to overcome some of the identified barriers which could ultimately lead to increased use and provision of marine data by and from industry.