On 18 and 19 March 2017 Dr Nengye Liu convened the ‘Conservation of Marine Living Resources in the Polar Regions, Science, Politics and Law’ conference in Wuhan, China, with the support of Wuhan University’s China Institute of Boundary and Ocean Studies and Research Institute of Environmental Law. The two-day conference draws a clear picture of how effective governance regimes could be developed to achieve sustainable management of marine living resources in the Arctic and Antarctica. It attracted a number of multi-disciplinary speakers and participants from eight countries, including the University of Tasmania, University of Dalhousie (Canada), Trier University (Germany), Ghent University (Belgium), University of Leuven (Belgium), Kobe University (Japan), Shanghai Institute for International Studies (China), Polar Research Institute of China, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China), Zhejiang University (China), Ocean University of China, City University of Hong Kong, Stanford University (United States), University of Connecticut (United States), University of Brasilia (Brazil), the Secretariat of Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources and the Antarctic Ocean Alliance.