Monitoring the marine world is becoming increasingly important as greater attention is being placed on the marine domain for ecosystem services such as food, recreation, transport, and energy. These services are also being impacted by changes in environmental parameters associated with climate change that are altering ecosystems through the change in abundance, phenology and distribution and interactions of the species that comprise ecosystems. Major biological monitoring programs that rely on continued scientific collection are becoming harder to fund as funding diminishes and funding bodies look for short term outputs (e.g. 3 year cycles). The challenge that marine biological monitoring currently faces is the need to collect samples frequently and across greater spatial scales than previously undertaken but in a cost efficient manner. Using recreational and commercial users of the marine domain may provide the opportunity to gather data at greater spatial scales including from regions difficult to sample, and at a frequency that could never be achieved using scientific sampling teams. In this presentation we will demonstrate two examples. The first will show the potential of the fishing industry using a recently developed project that provides win-win outcomes for fishers and scientific monitoring. The second example will focus on the use of citizen scientists using the example of REDMAP, an innovative range extension database that engages divers, fishers and boaters in reporting unusual sightings, and how this information is greatly extending available information on the changing distributions of marine species.