| Summary: | I have used these authors' previous text, Coastal-Marine Conservation: Science and Policy (2004), in an upper-level undergraduate course on coastal marine conservation for several years, and have been looking forward to the planned expansion of the number of region-specific case studies in this new volume. The previous three cases (Chesapeake Bay, the Bering Sea, and the Bahamas) are well chosen because they provide opportunities to focus on different key issues. Chesapeake Bay exemplifies a very well-studied system that is subject to multistate jurisdictions in the United States and that has been profoundly influenced by human disturbance. The Bering Sea case study provides opportunities to discuss the system-wide effects of large-scale physical oscillations and to focus on the population dynamics of certain charismatic species of marine mammals and fish. The Bahamas exemplify an island nation whose economic dependence on ecotourism dictates preservation of biodiversity at all levels while at the same time dealing with a potential shortage of freshwater and with the many-layered national jurisdictions in the Caribbean. These case studies are in the current volume. All have been revised and new material has been added. One welcome change is that each chapter is now extensively documented by citations from the peer-reviewed and gray literature, many of the latter accompanied by a corresponding online source.
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