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The Ocean and Us provides an overview of our contemporary understanding of the ocean and all the ways our lives interact with it. It is intended for everyone with an interest in our blue planet. The book brings together the expertise of over 35 ocean specialists from around the world. It explores a wide variety of themes including the importance of a healthy ocean in the fight to halt and contain climate change. It covers issues such as overfishing and pollution, as well as emerging themes such as the blue economy, marine animal welfare and how we can leverage innovation to protect the ocean. The book provides an overview of some of the world's iconic threatened and at risk ocean ecosystems, and outlines current governance structures and ocean management tools. It also discusses the important social dimensions between people and the ocean, such as ocean and human wellbeing, communities and the ocean, and who gets to participate in the ocean space. The book aims to enhance ocean literacy by making specialist concepts accessible to non-experts, with a view to empowering concerned citizens everywhere to come into action for the ocean, and pave a better way forward for humanity.

''A voluminous encyclopedia of Tethyan geology and, as such, it provides an invaluable source of information for those interested in this region, and Earth history in general...The book is a must for the libraries of universities and geologic institutions.''--- Palaios, October 1997 Volume 8 focuses on the Tethys oceanic realm and introduces new concepts such as'transit plates'and'seuils lithospheriques.'Contributors include new guides to understanding the distribution of Tethyan mineral and organic resources, and present insights into the role of carbonate platforms. Chapters are abundant with maps and illustrations.

In the summer of 1988, under NATO sponsorship, approximately 80 scientists lived and worked together in Plymouth for two weeks to evaluate the ecological role of protozoa in the sea. Through the convivial surroundings, close working conditions and special facilities that had been brought together for NATO ASI 604/87 a'melting pot'of ideas was formed, which stimulated the multidisciplinary creativity which is expressed in this book and in a second series of papers which will be published in Marine Microbial Food Webs under the title -'Protozoa and their Role in Marine Microbial Food Webs'. Discussions of the role of protozoa in the microbial food web, in the cycling of carbon and nitrogen and the extent to which this web acts as a link or sink to metazoa in the water column were major themes of the ASI. Structured sessions covering oral and poster presentations, field work, model 1 ing, laboratory practicals and demonstrations of techniques such as image analysis and flow cytometry, formed the core of the meeting. Participants took part enthusiastically in the practical sessions developing new concepts and obtaining new insights into their work. The practicals included a'protozoo'and some beautiful films and videos. Field excursions were made to a range of sites including a unique marine sewage farm at Looe in Cornwall, (Jones this volume). Interactive workshops allowed scientists with no modelling experience to input their results to three simulation models and a flow analysis package.

The impetus for the conference held at Bombannes, France in May, 1982 arose out of a Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) Working Group on'Mathematical Models in Biological Oceanography'. This group was chaired by K.H. Mann and held two meetings in 1977 and 1979. At both meetings it was felt that, although reductionist modelling of marine ecosystems had achieved some successes, the future progress lay in the development of holistic ecosystem models. The members of the group (K.H. Mann, T. Platt, J.M. Colebrook, D.F. Smith, M.J.R. Fasham, J. Field, G. Radach, R.E. Ulanowicz and F. Wulff) produced a critical review of reductionist and holistic models which was published by the Unesco Press (Platt, Mann and Ulanowicz, 1981). One of the conclusions of this review was that, whether holistic or reductionist models are preferred, it is critically important to increase the scientific effort in the measurement of physiological rates for the computation of ecological fluxes. The Working Group therefore recommended that an international meeting should be organized which would attempt to bring together theoretical ecologists and biological oceanographers to assess the present and future capability for measuring ecological fluxes and incorporating these data into models. An approach was made to the Marine Sciences Panel of the NATO Science Committee who expressed an interest in funding such a meeting. They awarded a planning grant and a planning group was formed consisting of M.J.R. Fasham, M.V. Angel, T. Platt, R.E.

The explosion of interest, effort, and information about the ocean since about 1950 has produced many thousand scientific articles and many hun­ dred books. In fact, the outpouring has been so large that authors have been unable to read much of what has been published, so they have tended to concentrate their own work within smaller and smaller subfields of oceanog­ raphy. Summaries of information published in books have taken two main paths. One is the grouping of separately authored chapters into symposia­ type books, with their inevitable overlaps and gaps between chapters. The other is production of lightly researched books containing drawings and tables from previous pUblications, with due credit given but showing assem­ bly-line writing with little penetration of the unknown. Only a few books have combined new and previous data and thoughts into new maps and syntheses that relate the contributions of observed biological, chemical, geological, and physical processes to solve broadproblems associated with the shape, composition, and history of the oceans. Such a broad synthesis is the objective of this book, in which we tried to bring together many of the pieces of research that were deemed to be of manageable size by their originators. The composite may form a sort of plateau above which later studies can rise, possibly benefited by our assem­ bly of data in the form of new maps and figures.

It is now well known that the mid-ocean flow is almost everywhere domi­ nated by so-called synoptic or meso-scale eddies, rotating about nearly vertical axes and extending throughout the water column. A typical mid­ ocean horizontal scale is 100 km and a time scale is 100 days: these meso­ scale eddies have swirl speeds of order 10 cm s -1 which are usually con­ siderably greater than the long-term average flow. Many types of eddies with somewhat different scales and characteristics have been identified. The existence of such eddies was suspected by navigators more than a century ago and confirmed by the world of C. O'D. Iselin and V. B. Stock­ man in the 1930's. Measurements from RIV Aries in 1959/60, using the then newly developed neutrally buoyant floats, indicated the main char­ acteristics of the eddies in the deep ocean of the NW Atlantic while a se­ ries of Soviet moored current-meter arrays culminated, in POLYGON- 1970, in the explicit mapping of an energetic anticyclonic eddy in the tropical NE Atlantic. In 1973 a large collaborative (mainly U. S., U. K.) program, MODE-I, produced synoptic charts for an area of the NW At­ lantic and confirmed the existence of an open ocean eddy field and es­ tablished its characteristics. Meso-scale eddies are now known to be of interest and importance to marine chemists and biologists as well as to physical oceanographers and meteorologists.

`Jellyfish', a group that includes scyphomedusae, hydromedusae, siphonophores and ctenophores, are important zooplankton predators throughout the world's estuaries and oceans. These beautiful creatures have come to public attention as featured exhibits in aquaria and in news headlines as invaders and as providers of genes used in biomedical research. Nevertheless, jellyfish are generally considered to be nuisances because they interfere with human activities by stinging swimmers, clogging power plant intakes and nets of fishermen and fish farms, and competing with fish and eating fish eggs and larvae. There is concern that environmental changes such as global warming, eutrophication, and over-fishing may result in increased jellyfish populations. The literature reviews and research papers in this volume explore the interactions between jellyfish and humans. Papers cover the medical aspects of jellyfish stings, jellyfish as human food and jellyfish fisheries, interactions of jellyfish and fish, effects of environmental changes on jellyfish, effects of introduced ctenophores on the Black Sea ecosystem, factors causing increases or concentrations of jellyfish, and others aspects of jellyfish ecology. This is an important reference for students and professional marine biologists, oceanographers, fishery scientists, and aquarists.

This book arises from a NATO-sponsored Advanced Study Institute on'The Role of Air-Sea Exchange in Geochemical Cycling'held at Bombann@§. near Bordeaux, France. from 16 to 27 September 1985. The chapters of the book are the written versions of the lectures given at the Institute. The aim of the book is to give a comprehensive up-to-date coverage of the subject. presented in a teaching mode. The chapters contain much recent research material and attempt to give the reader an understanding of how the role of air-sea exchange in geochemical cycling can be quantitatively assessed. In the last decade, major advances in the fields of marine and atmospheric chemistry have underlined the role of physical, chemical and biological processes at and near the air-sea interface in a number of geochemical cycles (C. S, N, metals etc...). Further, there is strong concern over the anthropogenic perturbation of these cycles on both regional and global scales. The first part of the book (Chapters 1 to 8) provides a review of topics fundamental to such studies. These topics include concepts in geochemical modelling, assessment of atmospheric transport from sources to the oceans. description of mixing and transport processes within the ocean for both dissolved and particulate materials, quantification of air-sea fluxes for both gases and particles, photochemical transformations in the atmospheric and oceanic boundary layers.

First published in 1989, Eric L. Mills's comprehensive history of biological oceanography has been praised as ‘superb'(BioScience) and ‘proof that history need not be dull'(The Northern Mariner). This first history of the field, which chronicles the scientific work and creativity of its chief contributors, tells a riveting story that is far from narrowly scientific and thoroughly accessible to general readers. Mills shows how the work and ideas of the main actors are inseparable from some seemingly unrelated factors, including Prussian imperialism, agricultural chemistry, microbiology, and the problems of German universities. Mills also illustrates the significant roles played in the field's development by the failures of commercial fisheries, the development of analytical chemistry, the establishment of international scientific organizations, and sheer scientific curiosity.This new edition of Biological Oceanography includes a fresh introduction by the author, as well as an original foreword by noted oceanographer John Cullen. It makes an excellent companion to Mills's recent history of mathematical and physical oceanography, the multi-award-winning and widely acclaimed The Fluid Envelope of Our Planet.

Following the exciting exploration of hot vent and cold seep ecosystems, the rediscovery of cold-water coral ecosystems with high-technology instrumentation is currently another hot topic in multidisciplinary marine research. Conventionally, coral reefs are regarded as restricted to warm and well-illuminated tropical seas, not associated with cold and dark waters of higher latitudes. However, ongoing scientific missions have shed light on the global significance of this overlooked ecosystem. Cold-water coral ecosystems are involved in the formation of large seabed structures such as reefs and giant carbonate mounds, and they represent unexploited paleo-environmental archives of earth history. Like their tropical cousins, cold-water coral ecosystems harbour rich species diversity. Despite the great water depths, commercial interests overlap more and more with the coral occurrences. Human activities already impinge directly on cold-water coral reefs causing severe damage to this vulnerable ecosystem. In this volume, the current key institutions involved in cold-water coral research have contributed 62 state-of-the-art articles from geology and oceanography to biology and conservation.

Carbon dioxide and other `greenhouse'gases are increasing in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels, the destruction of rain forests, etc., leading to predictions of a gradual global warming which will perturb the global biosphere. An important process which counters this trend toward potential climate change is the removal of carbon dioxide from the surface ocean by photosynthesis. This process packages carbon in phytoplankton which enter the food chain or sink into the deep sea. Their ultimate fate is a `rain'of organic debris out of the surface-mixed layer of the ocean. On a global scale, the mechanisms and overall rate of this process are poorly known. The authors of the 25 papers in this volume present their state-of-the-art approaches to quantifying the mechanisms by which the `rain'of biogenic debris nourishes deep ocean life. Prominent deep sea ecologists, geochemists and modelers address relationships between data and models of carbon fluxes and food chains in the deep ocean. An attempt is made to estimate the fate of carbon in the deep sea on a global scale by summing up the utilization of organic matter among all the populations of the abyssal biosphere. Comparisons are made between these ecological approaches and estimates of geochemical fluxes based on sediment trapping, one-dimensional geochemical models and horizontal (physical) input from continental margins. Planning interdisciplinary enterprises between geochemists and ecologists, including new field programs, are summarized in the final chapter. The summary includes a list of the important gaps in understanding which must be addressed before the role of the deep-sea biota in global-scale processes can be put in perspective.

This timely study is concerned with the current record of sea-level changes during the past 10,000 years; their rates, and our ability to estimate these changes accurately. The author begins with an extensive introduction to the subject, covering the historical background and the possible causes of sea-level changes and the main methods used to reconstruct former sea-level positions. The second and main part of the Atlas provides a worldwide review of Holocene sea level changes by assembling some 800 local relative sea-level curves, deduced from field data from all parts of the world, and comparing these with over 100 curves predicted by geophysical models. This data is compiled in 77 regional plates, each containing 4-20 relative sea-level curves drawn to the same scale. These plates enable a visual assessment of geological trends in sea-level during the Holocene to be made.Comparing this data with trends deduced from tide gauges and near-future trends predicted by climate models, should enable more accurate assessment of near future sea-level changes on a local scale. The regional plates are fully annotated with locations, authors'names, year of publication and some indicative values of the spring tidal range in the region, as well as an accompanying text of comments.Finally, the author provides a state of the art review, proposes improvements in methodology and suggests directions for further study. An extensive bibliography of over 750 references, and two indexes complete the study. This comprehensive work contains data and interpretations of value to all those with an interest in regional geography, climatology, sea-level change, and environmental science.