ABSTRACT
Fish stocks constitute a group of self-renewing resources, and their distribution and abundance are governed by a series of environmental factors. Although the ecosystems of the sea are inevitably less well known than those of the land, marine biology has been established as a branch of science in its own right since the late nineteenth century, starting with the work of such pioneers as Frank Buckland in the UK and Einar Lea in Norway. It is also the case that the marine environment was the subject of one of the early examples of international cooperation in science with the founding of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) in 1902 by a group of European nations around the North Sea. Although the seas occupy about 70 per cent of the surface area of the globe, only a small percentage (3 per cent-4 per cent) of the total organic production of the planet used by mankind comes from water bodies. In the oceans the production is remarkably concentrated in the relatively small parts of them that consist of continental shelves and deep upwelling areas. However, the yield from water is important to most human societies, and for some it is vital. The lesser variety of organic species in water than on land is due to the fact that water is a more uniform environmental medium than land. Life began in the sea and consequently the sea has a more complete representation of the major plant and animal families (phyla and genera) than the land.
