Interest in oceanography and marine biology and the relevance of those fields to global environmental issues creates a demand for authoritative reviews that summarize recent research. This series has catered to this demand since its foundation, by the late Harold Barnes, four decades ago. It is an annual consideration of basic areas of marine research; it returns to certain topics when appropriate in future volumes and adds new topics as they arise. Volume 42 contains analysis of convective chimneys in the Greenland Sea, spawning aggregations of coral reef fishes, exopolymers (EPS) in aquatic systems, the marine insect Halobates, and much more.