SponGES (www.deepseasponges.org) is a research and innovation project funded under the H2020 Blue Growth BG1 call aimed at “Improving the preservation and sustainable exploitation of Atlantic marine ecosystems”. Its overarching goal is to develop an integrated ecosystem-based approach to preserve and sustainably use deep-sea sponge ecosystems of the North Atlantic. Its consortium, an international and interdisciplinary collaboration of research institutions, environmental non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations, will focus on one of the most diverse, ecologically and biologically important and vulnerable marine ecosystems of the deep-sea – sponge grounds – that have received very little research and conservation attention to date.