North Atlantic EBSAs, VMEs and MPAs in a changing ocean - a one-day symposium Synopsis In the North Atlantic, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is central to the flow of energy and elements through the ocean. However, significant gaps in our understanding of the links between large-scale oceanographic processes and living marine resources hinder the development of predictive models to account for changes in ocean conditions due to climate change and increased human activity. The ATLAS project (www.eu-atlas.org) is exploiting the vast in situ time series dataset provided by international oceanographic arrays to understand how climate and oceanic variability interact with human pressures to control ecosystem functioning, biodiversity, connectivity and goods and services. Twelve case studies located across the Atlantic are examining specific scenarios of ‘Blue Growth’ development to inform marine spatial planning approaches. An integral part of this work is to consider implications of change on sensitive deep-water ecosystems that have been identified as significant and/or vulnerable and thus worthy of protection. The focus is on waters 200-2000m deep and on the implications of change for Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs), Ecologically or Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs) and High Seas Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). This one-day symposium on 12 May 2018 was aimed at scientists, practitioners, policy makers and representatives of civil society with expertise and interest in the future of these area-based management tools (ABMTs) or situations that could support ABMTs in the North Atlantic, and took place in Montreal immediately before the 4th World Conference on Marine Biodiversity. Presentations highlighted emerging results from ATLAS, and the status of ABMTs informed by predicted shifts in ecosystem dynamics were reviewed. Discussions examined opportunities and processes for adaptive management, and formulated recommendations for future priorities and directions. A postscript explains how this discussion fed into subsequent policy fora and informed papers published in 2019.