Preface
The future quality of life on Earth fundamentally depends on trends in world
climate. The oceans playa dominant role in regulating global climate by helping to control greenhouse gases, global heat transfer and weather patterns. If
we also consider the energy and other resources oceans offer, their essential
importance to human existence become obvious. Ocean waters are in endless
motions. Scales of these motions vary from micro-turbulence through to surface
and internal waves, tides, and global currents of planetary dimensions. However, in each case the water motion satisfies the fundamental fluid mechanics
and geophysical fluid mechanics principles.
Oceans are not empty, but support a large variety of organisms and plants.
Many of the basic attributes of life of these creatures raise such questions as:
why are the ocean's living resources distributed as they are?; how can cyclical
changes overthrow the system?; why do organisms have a particular size and
shape?; how do they move and reproduce?; how do they capture food and many
others.
In the majority of situations, biological processes appear to be strongly influenced by the physics, while the physical processes are largely independent of
the biology. However, when we consider a time scale of thousands years, the
feedback from biology to physics is not so simple. The present composition of
the Earth's atmosphere and the present average temperature at the surface of
the Earth have been strongly influenced by living organisms.
Physical factors leading to fertile and infertile areas are very different on land
and in the ocean. The nutrients required by terrestrial plants are generated
nearby from decaying remains of previous generations, but decaying matter in
the ocean tends to sink below the sunlit euphotic layer where plants grow. The
nutrients supplied by the decay are thus unavailable for plant growth unless
some physical mechanisms, such as currents and waves bring the nutrients back
up to the surface.
Most biologists are relatively unfamiliar with how the mechanics of fluids (air
and water) can help to explain the observed diversity of aquatic life. A successful explanation requires an approach in which, instead of putting the organisms
at the centre of the picture and considering them in relationship with other or-
The future quality of life on Earth fundamentally depends on trends in world
climate. The oceans playa dominant role in regulating global climate by helping to control greenhouse gases, global heat transfer and weather patterns. If
we also consider the energy and other resources oceans offer, their essential
importance to human existence become obvious. Ocean waters are in endless
motions. Scales of these motions vary from micro-turbulence through to surface
and internal waves, tides, and global currents of planetary dimensions. However, in each case the water motion satisfies the fundamental fluid mechanics
and geophysical fluid mechanics principles.
Oceans are not empty, but support a large variety of organisms and plants.
Many of the basic attributes of life of these creatures raise such questions as:
why are the ocean's living resources distributed as they are?; how can cyclical
changes overthrow the system?; why do organisms have a particular size and
shape?; how do they move and reproduce?; how do they capture food and many
others.
In the majority of situations, biological processes appear to be strongly influenced by the physics, while the physical processes are largely independent of
the biology. However, when we consider a time scale of thousands years, the
feedback from biology to physics is not so simple. The present composition of
the Earth's atmosphere and the present average temperature at the surface of
the Earth have been strongly influenced by living organisms.
Physical factors leading to fertile and infertile areas are very different on land
and in the ocean. The nutrients required by terrestrial plants are generated
nearby from decaying remains of previous generations, but decaying matter in
the ocean tends to sink below the sunlit euphotic layer where plants grow. The
nutrients supplied by the decay are thus unavailable for plant growth unless
some physical mechanisms, such as currents and waves bring the nutrients back
up to the surface.
Most biologists are relatively unfamiliar with how the mechanics of fluids (air
and water) can help to explain the observed diversity of aquatic life. A successful explanation requires an approach in which, instead of putting the organisms
at the centre of the picture and considering them in relationship with other or-