Preface
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freely distribute satellite data and images to the rest of us. Their skill and generosity has
revolutionized oceanography.
I also remain acutely conscious of the debt that I owe to the many people who taught
me enough about the oceans to risk undertaking this book in the first place, some of
whom I listed in the preface to the first edition of 1998. I am also very grateful to
those people whose warm reception of that work has encouraged me to undertake this
rewriting and expansion of it; you were very generous in your comments and very patient
in replying to my often naïve enquiries about your special fields: you know who you are,
and I thank you one and all.