The United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development requires that all of the Actions it endorses have concrete plans to involve stakeholders in the co-creation of ocean science. As a result, we have a unique opportunity to test different approaches to stakeholder engagement to see what works and what does not. Here, we feature short essays in the “Food for Thought” series in which leaders from Decade-endorsed Actions describe how they plan to incorporate stakeholders in the co-design, co-production, and co-delivery of ocean science and how they will measure whether these approaches were successful. We also invited submissions to the journal’s “Stories from the Front Lines” series, in which authors were asked to share unvarnished accounts of the lessons learned from previous efforts to co-design ocean science. We hope that these initial articles will be the beginning of an ongoing series in which new Decade Actions will also document their plans to implement, monitor, and measure the success or failure of these approaches.