Hurricanes are projected to increase in frequency, intensity, and spatial coverage with climate change. Aquatic systems, both freshwater and coastal marine, are particularly sensitive to these extreme events. However, our understanding of how and why ecosystems respond to particular hurricane disturbances remains limited because historically, the research efforts have been fragmented and largely focused on the unique characteristics of individual case studies. However, over the past decade there has been a consistent effort across fields of ecology to create frameworks for conceptual integration, data synthesis, and question driven research to better understand the ecology of extreme events, including hurricanes. In this presentation I cover some of the history of hurricane research on aquatic ecosystems, highlight the challenges associated with advancing the field, share recent advances stemming from my research after Hurricane Harvey and data synthesis lead by the HERS-RCN (Hurricane Ecosystem Response Synthesis – Research Coordination Network), and pose some important questions that still need to be addressed. Research highlights include the recent discovery that ecosystem responses to hurricanes (and all perturbations) tend to covary in terms of response size relative to stress (resistance) and recovery time relative to response magnitude (resilience), the effect that hurricane frequency has on functional diversity of aquatic communities, the role that biodiversity plays in system response to hurricane disturbance, and how climate regime interacts with hurricane disturbances to dictate ecosystem resistance and resilience. The presentation will also touch on recent efforts to link ecological investigations to the social sciences, building the responses of socio-economic systems into our conceptual framework.