Coastal seascapes are ever changing due to the dynamic nature of these environments, as a direct result of restoration and conservation activities, and in response to global climate change. Integrating these fluxes, in species distributions, biodiversity values and ecosystem integrity, into management actions necessitates the implementation of planning approaches and monitoring programs that are inherently spatial and conceived at the scale of entire interconnected seascapes. The focus of most spatial management initiatives, however, remains centred on the representation or recovery of individual ecosystems, or the status and condition of individual populations. This presentation describes the significance of seascape recovery for biodiversity and fisheries values, using coastal marine parks and restoring wetland seascapes in eastern Australia as model systems. Our findings show that variation in seascape diversity and connectivity frequently matter the most, and indeed more than changes in ecosystem condition and extent, for the realisation of benefits from coastal restoration and conservation. We suggest that management interventions should embrace this complexity, and that this requires new approaches and metrics for indexing connectivity and fluxes in changing seascapes.