How small/medium-sized (SM) commercial ports act politically matters for localecological transformation facing increasing climate and socio-environmentalfailures and dilemmas. In this spirit, we compared the environmental public actionof two SM ports in southwestern France–La Rochelle and Bayonne–facing twosets of dilemmas: (i) how to tackle problems emerging from past choices; (ii) how toresolve issues arising from‘choosing the future today’. Whereas global scientificassessments highlight regulatory, accompanying and collective approaches as highconfidence ones towards ecological transformation, more technologically resourcedscenarios (without economic behavioural change governance) are available to SMports. Furthermore, although political processes of territorialisation, democratisationand ecologisation have reconfigured environmental authority for both public actorsand SM ports in France, there is nothing inevitable about how different categoriesof public (and private) actor may work together. Our results reflect these tensions.Both SM ports have engaged to institutionalise regulatory, accompanying andcollective environmental public action, and portray new approaches as indicative oftheir acknowledged responsibility. Nevertheless, important contradictions muddythe ecologisation trajectories their key actors claim to be taking. Overall, the studyhighlights that transformed governance alone does not guarantee that actors havefully embarked upon a newly transformative trajectory.