Traditionally the marine atlases were based on the visual reports taken from ships. On top of the unavoidable errors, these data carry with them a basic flaw, because of the care with which the captains try to avoid as far as possible the stormy areas. Besides these data are concentrated only on the main shipping lanes. More recently, during the last 10-20 years, three new sources of data have become available: buoys, satellites and numerical models. However, notwithstanding the enormous ...

The oceanic lithosphere covers 2/3 of our Planet: understanding how it forms and evolves is a major challenge in the Earth sciences. New crust is continuously being created by partial melting of the upwelling mantle; and the melt rises towards the ocean floor, cools, solidifies and is then 'rafted' away to either side of the ridge by seafloor spreading. Mid-ocean ridge (MOR) topography, structure and composition indicate that near zero age processes of lithosphere formation vary along ridge ...

Marine biofouling, whose global annual costs have been calculated to be about 6,5 billion of dollars, causes ship velocity reduction and dry docks stopping for hull scraping and antifouling protective coating repainting by new antifouling paints containing toxic biocides that gradually released; from their hulls should avoid fouling settlement but contemporarily contributing to environmental pollution, severely in some cases, especially in coastal areas. The IMO (International Maritime ...

The issues that confront scientists studying continental margins are complex and range from drainage basin dynamics to sediment transport theory, sea level history and climate change. Many of the scientific concepts employed to understand societal problems like coastal pollution, hydrocarbon and ground water reservoirs, landslide hazards, and coastal erosion are deeply rooted in understanding sediment transport and stratigraphic sequence evolution. Two overarching questions behind these complex ...