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Abstract Ecosystem‐based management (EBM) is promoted in scholarly literature and international policy as a way to improve marine ecosystem outcomes, through the integration of marine law and policies across sectors, communities, and scales. A legal and policy framework that supports EBM at appropriate temporal and spatial scales is fundamental to the successful deployment of EBM. However, marine management is typically fragmented and misaligned, with a range of laws, policies, governance institutions, and sectoral frameworks applying to different marine spaces and working on varying timescales. In this focus article, we draw on our comprehensive study of Aotearoa New Zealand's marine law and policy to analyze the challenges scale mismatches present for marine law and policy implementation, focusing on key policy areas across fisheries, environment, conservation, and Indigenous rights and interests. We identify key opportunities to better align marine law and policy to ecosystem scale dynamics, revealing critical lessons for the imperative of scale‐sensitive marine law and policy design, globally. This article is categorized under: Policy and Economics > Research and Development Policy and Economics > Governance and Regulation Climate and Environment > Ecosystem Services
Macpherson et al. (Sun,) studied this question.