The use of science in understanding the marine environment of the Atlantic margin

In taking this overview, it is clearly necessary to identify some major contributions that have helped us understand the complexity of the marine environment that embodies the Atlantic Margin to the west of Scotland. Here, I attempt to provide a point of view that spans the wide spatial scale that we can obtain from satellites, right down the way to the behaviour of materials and substances as they transit through the water column and across the sediment-water interface. It is in this latter context that man's impact in this frontier region needs to be assessed and in particular, any potential impact that the exploration of oil and gas may have. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.