Progress at IMER

Abstract

In September 1970 the Natural Environment Research Council formed the new Institute for Marine Environmental Research by incorporation of the former Oceanographic Laboratory, at Edinburgh, of the Scottish Marine Biological Association. The intention was (a) to develop studies of variability in near-shore waters and estuaries, comparable with those carried out by the Edinburgh Laboratory for more than twenty years in the open ocean, (b) to integrate physical, chemical and biological studies of these ecosystems and (c) to link the field studies with related experimental investigations in the laboratory. In all of this it was intended that pollution and pollutants should be studied—not as topics in isolation—but as parts of the set of environmental variables that affect plants and animals. In particular it was intended that the programmes would give effect to the generally recognised tenet that under-standing of natural variability is an essential basis for the detection and prediction of any effects that man's impact might have on the marine environment.