ABSTRACT
The frequency with which we hear of environmental bad news seems to be increasing. Even a decade ago, the public was not so besieged by accounts of environmental disaster. Increasingly, and unfortunately, those accounts often involve pollution of one kind or another of the oceans. We read of a major oil spill in the Red Sea; of raw sewage washing up on fabled beaches in the Mediterranean; of plastic debris littering remote beaches in the Yucatan Pennisula; and of chemical pollutants endangering or killing fish and marine mammals in a number of locations around the world. The spill from the EXXON VALDEZ in Alaska was the second major spill on the west coast of North America this year. Last year, the media focused on the large and unexplained kills of Atlantic marine mammals. Less than a year ago, there were reports of large quantities of medical waste washing up on beaches in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and not far from the site of this symposium, on Long Island and New Jersey.
