The world ocean covers more than two-thirds of the planet and provides a huge resource to humankind. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute website (http://www.whoi.edu/) carries some fascinating global marine information including the observation that 44% of the world's population lives within 150 km of the ocean. In Europe 43% of the population live within ‘coastal regions’ and the coastal strip is noted as a primary tourist destination. The benefits of this on human health and well-being are beginning to be realized (White et al., Reference White, Pahl, Wheeler, Fleming and Depledge2016). However, with an increasing global population we live in an era where anthropogenic pressures, particularly on the coastal strip, are increasing. Halpern et al. (Reference Halpern, Frazier, Potapenko, Casey, Koenig, Longo, Lowndes, Rockwood, Selig, Selkoe and Walbridge2015) noted that in the previous five years, cumulative impacts of 12 anthropogenic stressors had affected some 66% of the ocean. This year, in the UK, we have seen a marked increase in public awareness of man's impact on the ocean thanks to high profile television programming and popular public campaigns regarding plastic pollution. Public concern and appreciation for the marine environment is certainly at a high point.
However, to improve our management of the oceans we need to understand the nature and complexity of its various ecosystems and the organisms that inhabit them. Marine scientists need to provide good evidence to underpin policymaking and hence social change. The Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom has a long history of publishing material relevant to these debates. It is a journal with an established reputation, international reach and a broad scope across the marine realm. In this issue there are papers from around the world, from the Barents Sea (Lucas et al., Reference Lucas, Sikorski and San Martín2018) to the southern Philippine Sea (Yu & Xu, Reference Yu and Xu2018). They detail basic research on marine organisms from the microscopic Chatonella spp. in Japanese inlets (Yamaguchi et al., Reference Yamaguchi, Tanimoto, Hayashi, Suzuki, Yamaguchi and Adachi2018) to megafauna in the shape of sharks in the Ecuadorian Pacific (Estupiñán-Montaño et al., Reference Estupiñán-Montaño, Pacheco-Triviño, Cedeño-Figueroa, Galván-Magaña and Estupiñán-Ortiz2018). There are papers highlighting how organisms engineer their environments (Perry et al., Reference Perry, Sapir, Perry, Ten Hove and Fine2018; Pocklington et al., Reference Pocklington, Jenkins, Bellgrove, Keough, O'Hara, Masterson-Algar and Hawkins2018).
Attention is given to management of environments. In their review, David & Loveday (Reference David and Loveday2018) define and highlight the potential importance of cryptic dispersal in determination of marine connectivity and hence the design of Marine Protected Areas. The effects of anthropogenic activities in a subtropical bay in China are explored by Du et al. (Reference Du, Liao, Jiang, Wang, Zeng, Shou, Xu, Xu, Liu, Huang and Zhang2018). Insights are provided by a local fishing community into the small cetacean Pontopora blainvillei in southern Brazil and demonstrate the potential of combining traditional and scientific knowledge for species conservation (Zappes et al., Reference Zappes, Gama, Domit, Gatts and Di Beneditto2018). Whilst practical methods for improving the survival of an endemic shallow water coral through transplantation are investigated by Terrón-Sigler et al. (Reference Terrón-Sigler, León-Muez, Peñalver-Duque and Espinosa Torre2018).
As the incoming Editor in Chief I welcome the diversity of the contributions we receive at the Journal and look forward to receiving and working with authors on similarly diverse manuscripts in the future.
