ABSTRACT
Humans have existed as the species Homo sapiens for several hundred thousand years. For almost all of this period they could have been dismissed readily as "somewhat gregarious, mildly destructive, and generally slovenly terrestrial animals:' Only during this century (a tiny fraction of one percent of their total tenure) have they begun to make any measurable impact on the oceans that cover most of the planet: since the Industrial Revolution as instigators of chemical and physical changes that have modified rivers, estuaries, and localized segments of coastal waters; and during the past four decades as serious predators on ocean fish stocks. This book is an attempt to summarize our present understanding of how contamination resulting from human activities - collectively termed pollution* - has affected and is affecting living marine resources, especially those species that inhabit the vulnerable coastaVestuarine zones.
