Reviews of water quality and transport of materials in coastal and estuarine waters

During the 66th Statutory Meeting of ICES held in 1978 in Copenhagen, Denmark, members of the Marine Environmental Quality Committee (:MEQC) discussed at various times the importance of beginning to document the relative health and conditions of important northern European and North American estuaries and coastal waters. Discussions culminated in a theme for the 67th Statutory Meeting, which was noted as being the "status and health of estuarine waters". Seven papers were subsequently given during the MEQC sections of the 67th

Statutory Meeting of ICES in Warsaw, Poland. All of the papers were from investigators working with estuaries along the northeast coastline of the United States, Papers were prepared on the estuaries located along the Maine coast (C ,M, 1979/ E:41 ), Long Isl and Sound ( 1979/ E : 47 ) , Narragansett Bay ( 1979/ E: 46 ), Raritan Bay (1979/ E: 45) , Delaware Bay (1979/ E:43) and Chesapeake Bay (1979/ E : 42 ). For the 68th Statutory Meeting I was asked to prepare a resume ( 1980/ E: 56) which would update the materials presented in the earlier papers concerned with the health of estuaries. The Chairman of the MEQC also requested that Eμropean and United Kingdom investigators submit papers for the 68th Statutory Meeting that would provide overviews for the situation in Europe. Also, several papers were forthcoming and presented at the 68th Statutory Meeting and were concerned with transport of contaminants and other materials within

major estuaries, These papers were deemed highly important in leading to increased understanding of the sources and fates of contaminants in estuaries and coastal waters and, ultimately, to the effects of contaminants on living resources. One paper (1980/E:34) noted that it is: "••• important to understand the effects of estuarine processes on trace metal behaviour for prediction of the geochemical behaviour of each individual element and its possible effects on organisms •••"• Among the resolutions passed at the 68th Statutory Meeting, 1980, was Council Resolution 1980/1:5: "selected review papers and summaries of other contributions presented to ICES on the Marine Environmental Quality Committee's theme of water quality and transport of materials in coastal and estuarine environments should be edited by Dr J B Pearce and published along with appropriate discussions in the Cooperative Research Report series. The volume should not exceed about 150 pages". Therefore, it was decided to take the earlier papers presented at the 67th Statutory Meeting, along with selected papers that were presented at the 68th Statutory Meeting, 1980, and which had to do with water quality transport of materials in estuaries and movements of larvae from estuaries, and to publish them, after editing, as a Cooperative Research Report.