The state of the world's seas is often painted as verging on catastrophe. But although some challenges are very real, others have been vastly overstated, researchers claim in a review paper. The team writes that scientists, journals and the media have fallen into a mode of groupthink that can damage the credibility of the ocean sciences. It is not just journalists who are to blame, they maintain: the marine research community “may not have remained sufficiently sceptical” on the topic. --Daniel Cressey, Nature, 14 January 2015