The amount of wrack deposited and retained on a beach may be affected by the beach’s morphology. Conversely, wrack deposits have the potential to modify sediment dynamics on the beach face through accumulation and erosion of sediments around wrack deposits, and the incorporation of organic matter into beach sands. The aims of this chapter were thus to determine whether beach morphology differed...

This study investigated the occurrence and diversity of Bacteroidales fecal bacteria in gulls residing in the Great Lakes region. Members of this bacterial order have been widely employed as human and bovine host-specific markers of fecal pollution; however, few studies have focused on gulls, which can be a major source of fecal indicator bacteria and pathogens at beaches. We found a low but co...

Survival rates of early life stages (eggs/hatchlings) in marine turtle populations critically influence adult recruitment rate and thus population persistence (Mazaris et al. 2005, 2006). Therefore, for conservation and management purposes, it is particularly important to understand how marine turtle hatching success (percentage of eggs that produce hatchlings) may be affected by human disturba...

T he BP Deepwater Horizon event released approximately 206 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. 1 BP's primary strategy for handing this large spill was to use the dispersant COREXIT to disperse and mix this enormous volume of oil over a larger volume of seawater. This is the time-honored strategy of dilution as the solution to pollution. While this strategy appears to have bee...

During the 1980s, the profile of recreational water quality at Sydney’s beaches caused concern among Sydneysiders. Monitoring of recreational water quality indicated that most Sydney beaches had poor water quality, and this condition was attributed to the disposal of partiallytreated sewage at cliff-face discharges. An epidemiological study conducted in 1989–1990 attempted to determine the prev...

Located on the northwest coast of Ross Island in McMurdo Sound, Cape Bird features virtually unweathered surface drift with erratics from the Transantarctic Mountains (TAM) and with enclosed marine shell fragments. This Cape Bird drift is cut by Holocene beaches. The chronology of drift deposition and beach formation comes from AMS radiocarbon dates of associated marine shells, and of penguin b...