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In many ways applications of satellite altimetry along the coasts of North America are representative of similar applications elsewhere in the world. On the east coast, North America has a fairly broad continental shelf which impacts coastal altimetry applications more than the relatively narrow shelf of the west coast. The Gulf of Mexico is a unique coastal region where altimetry mapping of ocean currents is significantly more successful than using traditional satellite measurements of sea surface temperature and ocean color. Meteorological conditions differ strongly between the east and west coasts with corresponding impact on the use of altimetry. Also there have been many more studies of altimeter data on the west coast than on the east coast of North America. We summarize here past studies of altimetric applications for all three coastal regions (West and East Coasts and the Gulf of Mexico) and briefly discuss the implications of tidal effects, impacts of water vapor corrections, and the need for the retracking of near coastal altimetric waveforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cephalopods are highly sensitive to environmental conditions and changes at a range of spatial and temporal scales. Relationships documented between cephalopod stock dynamics and environmental conditions are of two main types: those concerning the geographic distribution of abundance, for which the mechanism is often unknown, and those relating to biological processes such as egg survival, growth, recruitment and migration, where mechanisms are sometimes known and in a very few cases demonstrated by experimental evidence. Cephalopods seem to respond to environmental variation both `actively΄ (e.g. migrating to areas with more favoured environmental conditions for feeding or spawning) and `passively΄ (growth and survival vary according to conditions experienced, passive migration with prevailing currents). Environmental effects on early life stages can affect life history characteristics (growth and maturation rates) as well as distribution and abundance. Both large-scale atmospheric and oceanic processes and local environmental variation appear to play important roles in species-environment interactions. While oceanographic conditions are of particular significance for mobile pelagic species such as the ommastrephid squids, the less widely ranging demersal and benthic species may be more dependent on other physical habitat characteristics (e.g. substrate and bathymetry). Coastal species may be impacted by variations in water quality and salinity (related to rainfall and river flow). Gaps in current knowledge and future research priorities are discussed. Key research goals include linking distribution and abundance to environmental effects on biological processes, and using such knowledge to provide environmental indicators and to underpin fishery management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A core from the western end of the subtropical gyre (ODP Leg 172 Site 1060, 31°45N, 74°24W, 3400m water depth) in close proximity with the Gulf Stream was studied at high resolution to clarify the surface hydrology changes involved during the last interglacial, their relations and impact over deep circulation as well as continental climate as recorded by pollen. The occurrence of high-frequency cold events at subtropical latitudes is also examined. For the time span from 134 to 108 kyr, eight distinct periods can be recognised on the basis of planktonic foraminifera assemblages. These faunal changes are related mainly to changes in the summer stratification tracing the Gulf Stream current influence and late winter mixing controlling the formation of the subtropical mode water. In addition, our results indicate that during the deglaciation, the sea level rise first during 4 kyr, while sea-surface temperatures stay cold. Only at 128 kyr do the two vary in phase sharply and rapidly; after that date the Gulf Stream increases its influence and reaches a maximum on the core site after 125 kyr. Therefore, the onset of the warm current seems to predate by 2 kyr the onset of the Eemian on land as recorded off Portugal. During the interval 122-116, the sea-surface temperatures are maximum in winter but start to decrease in summer. Superimposed on this cooling trend, we found several high-frequency cooling events better marked in winter (around 2°C). For most of these, cooling peaks of lithic concentration (90-150 μm) probably representing periodic ice rafting to the core site were found. We found that the repeated pacing of these events is about 1400 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both geographically and in the European imagination, Scandinavia lies on the northern margin of Europe. Havelock Ellis conveyed a characteristic nineteenth-century image when he described Norway as ‘a land having, in its most characteristic regions, a year of but one day and night – the summer a perpetual warm sunlit day filled with the aroma of trees and plants, and the rest of the year a night of darkness and horror; a land which is on the extreme northern limit of European civilisation’. The facts of Scandinavian life are harsh by European standards: Scandinavia is ‘the western part of Siberia’. It is a Siberia tempered by the Gulf Stream, and this moderating influence has made civilised existence possible in such high latitudes for centuries. Nevertheless, until very recent times the physical environment imposed rigid constraints on human activity in the far north of Europe. Since the resources which could be exploited by primitive technology were so meagre, much of the population lived on the very edge of subsistence. In the late nineteenth century the Scandinavian countries were still among the poorest in Europe in terms of per capita income. It is only within the last hundred years that the physical constraints have been decisively overcome through the application of modern technology to every field of activity: communications, housing, agriculture and extractive and manufacturing industry. The tyrannies of climate and terrain have to a large extent been overcome, but the habits of isolation and detachment have persisted into the late twentieth century. Scandinavians still feel different from, and sometimes superior to, other Europeans; the rest of Europe still takes notice of Scandinavia only intermittently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[P]robably all the great sea-fisheries, are inexhaustible.… It is a mistake to suppose that the whole ocean is practically one vast store-house. The differences in opinions about the causes of the fluctuations in the catches of fish described in chapter 1 came into clearer focus in London between Monday 18 June and Friday 20 July 1883. The occasion was the Great International Fishery Exhibition, and two of the most influential scientists in England offered their opinions on the effect of fishing during public lectures. Thomas Huxley argued that humanity's efforts could have no effect on subsequent catches, while Ray Lankester argued that catching female fish resulted in the absence of the young fish that they would have produced, and that this absence had an effect. These two opinions had important economic and political consequences, and were similar to ideas expressed in a report on the state of fisheries laws commissioned by landlocked Austria a few years earlier (Peyrer 1876 p. 670). He noted arguments by some that ‘the disregard of all protective measures, and of all regulations limiting the methods of fishing, will, in the end, prove disastrous to the salt-water fisheries, in the same way as with our river and lake fisheries,’ while others demanded ‘complete freedom from all those limitations which only quench the spirit of enterprise.’ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]