While economic valuation of ecosystem services (ES) is widely acknowledged as a tool to support decision-making processes, studies have also shown that there exists a literature blindspot on the effective use of economic valuation (Laurans et al. 2013; Marco ne and Mongruel 2014). The VALMER project seeks to bridge this gap between theory and practice by looking at how ecosystem services assessment (ESA) can support marine management and planning. Natural scientists, economists and marine environment managers from various institutions undertook ESAs in six pilot sites over the two sides of the Channel. The objectives of this paper are to share some results of two French ESAs, and to discuss issues and perspectives of ESAs from a marine management perspective. This paper is based on an oral communication given at the 4th conference on Progress in Marine Conservation in Europe 2015, organised by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), in cooperation with the German Oceanographic Museum.