Abstract Marine policymakers are facing increasing calls to consider the resilience of communities that rely on coastal and marine ecosystem goods and services, and the resilience of natural systems themselves. These calls are in response to increasing threats to coastal communities from external factors such as coastal hazards, possibly associated with climate change, reductions in natural capital often caused by over-fishing and invasive species, and drivers that act to change local and regional economic conditions leading to changes in employment and inequality. However, most communities have had little experience in explicitly managing for resilience. Similarly, our understanding of the factors that make a natural or social system resilient is also somewhat limited. Furthermore, there is a lack of consensus-based definitions and performance measures for assessing resilience. These factors, along with other barriers, will need to be overcome before effective resilience-based management can be implemented.