The first number of the Journal-of the Marine Biological Association appeared in August 1887, during the final stages of the building of the Laboratory, while research was being carried out from rented rooms in the Barbican. To celebrate the centenary of this outstanding serial publication in marine science, and the centenary of the opening of the Laboratory in June next year, we are including in the present issue an updated account of the history of the Association, based on a version originally published in 1984 to celebrate the founding of the Association in March 1884. We are indebted to the Council of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science for permission to reprint a substantial part of the text that appeared in their Transactions for 1984.

The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of rapid change in the natural sciences in Britain, reflecting changes in social conditions and improvements in education. A growing number of naturalists were becoming socially conscious and aware of the need for a proper study of the sea and its products, following the success of the ‘Challenger’ Expedition of 1872–6. In 1866 the Royal Commission on the Sea Fisheries, which included among its officers Professor T. H. Huxley, one of the new breed of professional scientists, had reported that fears of over-exploitation of the sea-fisheries were unfounded, and had recommended doing away with existing laws regulating fishing grounds and closed seasons. Nevertheless, the rising trade in fresh fish carried to towns by rail or by fast boats (fleeting), and the consequent increase in size and number of registered fishing vessels, was causing widespread concern, and there were reports from all round the coasts about the scarcity of particular fish, especially soles. This concern was expressed at the International Fisheries Exhibition in London in 1883, a conference called to discuss the commercial and scientific aspects of the fishing industry, attended by many active and first-rank scientists. However, in his opening address Professor Huxley discounted reports of scarcity of fish, and repeated the views of the Royal Commission of 1866: that, with existing methods of fishing, it was inconceivable that the great sea fisheries, such as those for cod, herring and mackerel, could ever be exhausted.

The term ‘imposex’ was coined by Smith (1971) to describe the superimposition of male characters onto unparasitized and parasitized females of gonochoristic gastropods. In Nassarius obsoletus (Say) the development of imposex results in the female having one or more of the following characters: (1) a penis with a duct leading to (2) a vas deferens which passes back to the ventral channel of the capsule gland and (3) convolution of the normally straight gonadial oviduct (Smith, 1980). Imposex in the similarly gonochoristic Nucella lapillus (L.) was first noted by Blaber (1970) who found females with penis-like outgrowths in Plymouth Sound populations. Subsequent studies (Bryan et al. 1986; Gibbs & Bryan, 1986) have demonstrated that the incidence and intensity of imposex have since increased markedly in the same populations and that the phenomenon is widespread around south-west England.

Populations of the gastropod, Nucella lapillus (L.), normally one of the commonest of rocky-shore macroinvertebrates, have recently suffered from declining numbers at many sites along the south coast of England. Bryan et al. (1986) showed that these declining populations exhibited a high degree of imposex (the induction of a penis and vas deferens in females) and that imposex was almost certainly caused by tributyltin (TBT) compounds leached from ships' antifouling paints. Evidence implicating TBT compounds in the development of imposex included: (1) a good relationship between the degree of imposex and the proximity of affected populations to harbours and marinas; (2) in Plymouth Sound, the degree of imposex increased dramatically between its discovery in 1969 (Blaber, 1970) and 1985, thus coinciding with the introduction and increasing usage of TBT-based paints; (3) tissue concentrations of tin as TBT increased consistently with the degree of imposex; (4) animals transplanted from a ‘clean’ area to a harbour site absorbed TBT and developed imposex; (5) preliminary experiments showed that imposex was induced by exposure to 20 ng/1 of tin as TBT leached from a TBT-based paint; (6) TBT is implicated in the induction of imposex in other stenoglossan gastropods including Nassarius obsoletus (Say) (Smith, 1981) and Ocenebra erinacea (L.) (Féral & Gall, 1982).

The suggestion that the two chaetognath species Sagitta setosa and S. elegans were ‘indicators’ of different water masses was first made by Meek (1928), working off Northumberland, and subsequently developed by Russell (1933, 1935, 1939) in his classical work on their distribution as indicators of ‘Channel’ and ‘Western’ water off Plymouth. The alternation in dominance of the two species during the well-known changes in the Western Channel off Plymouth during the past 60 years (which have been termed the ‘Russell’ cycle; Cushing & Dickson, 1976) have most recently been reviewed and discussed by Southward (1984).

During a period of five years in the mid-1970s, fish were collected at weekly intervals from the Severn Estuary and Bristol Channel. The resultant data on the abundance and lengths of these fish have provided valuable information on the times when the juveniles of several marine species are recruited into the estuary and on their pattern of growth during the first years of life (Claridge & Gardner, 1977; Titmus, Claridge & Potter, 1978; Claridge & Potter, 1983, 1984, 1985; Potter & Claridge, 1985). One of the marine species found in the Severn Estuary for which no seasonal data on density or body size have been presented is the sole, Solea solea (L.), whose relative abundance ranked it amongst the top ten species in two of the five years of our study (Claridge, Potter & Hardisty, 1986).

The Talitridae are recognized as being difficult to identify (for example, Goodhart, 1941; Den Hartog, 1963) and it is thus not surprising that some species have been overlooked. Goodhart (1941) mentioned a new subspecies of Orchestia mediterranea Costa, 1853 which was not described, and the specimens are now lost (C. B. Goodhart, personal communication). During work on the biology of Orchestia in estuaries, two new taxa were discovered and tentatively given subspecific status (Wildish, 1969, 1970). Re-examination of the specimens in the British Museum (Natural History) and National Museum of Natural Sciences, Canada shows that both warrant specific status.

Cadmium, and its compounds, has been placed on the blacklists of most international pollution conventions by virtue of its toxicity, potential for bioaccumulation and persistence (Taylor, 1983).

The ability of many marine molluscs, and in particular gastropods, to accumulate Cd to a high degree in apparently unregulated fashion has led to their frequent use in monitoring programmes. Thus Cd levels in the winkle, Littorina littorea (L.) closely reflect gradients in environmental contamination (Bryan et al. 1983), demonstrating the excellent ‘indicator’ properties of this group.

Considerable work on deep-sea parasite faunas, including monogeneans, has been carried out in the north-west Atlantic (Suydam, 1971; Campbell, Haedrich & Munroe, 1980; Munroe, Campbell & Zwerner 1981; Zubchenko, 1981) and some in the Pacific (Gusev, 1957; Robinson, 1961), but work of this nature in the north-east Atlantic is limited mainly to species lists and descriptions (Gallien, 1937; Rees & Llewellyn, 1941; Brinkmann, 1952). The present paper presents observations on monogenean parasites of fishes from the Rockall Trough area of the north-east Atlantic.

During a short stay at the Marine Biological Association Laboratory Plymouth (mid-September 1982) preliminary investigations of the interstitial fauna of marine sand were carried out. The sampling sites with the recorded Mollusca have already been communicated (Salvini-Plawen, 1984).

As concerns mesopsammic Cnidaria, only a few findings have been made in British waters (Boaden, 1963, 1966; Harris, 1972). The present contribution reports not only new records for the Plymouth area and British waters in general, but also provides comparative knowledge of mesopsammic faunas.

An increasing interest has been generated in the potential use of oral vaccines in the prevention of diseases of farmed fish (Ellis, 1985; Manning & Tatner, 1985). As part of an investigation of the fate of ingested antigenic material in fish we have in previous studies (Hart, Wrathmell & Harris, 1986 a, b) examined the ontogeny and morphology of GALT in the common dogfish at the light-microscopic level. GALT was shown to occupy three niches throughout the gut: as accumulations of leucocytes in the lamina propria and as individual cells in the lamina propria and epithelium.

The gross anatomy of the heart-body of the lugworm Arenicola grubii Clap, was described by Gamble & Ashworth (1900) and Ashworth (1904) who noted that it was also well developed in A. ecaudata Johnston (Ashworth, 1904) but was absent in A. claparedii Levinsen and A. cristata Stimpson. These authors noticed that there was no trace of a heart-body in young specimens of A. marina (L.) but that it was recognisable in worms measuring 65 mm or more in length. In such worms the heart-body tissue was described as consisting of two simple layers. In larger worms the layers are invaded by tissue resembling the wall of the heart and are probably invaginations of it. Dissection does suggest that the heart-body which lies only within the ventricle, is indeed formed by invaginations from the wall of the heart.

Within a cohort of young copepods, the individual size or growth rate becomes increasingly diversified during the development. The longer the development, the greater the resulting anatomical or functional diversity, since the differences between fast growing and slow growing individuals increase with time. Different factors may contribute to this variability, such as genetic diversity and metabolic differences in the ability to utilize food resources.

The highly restricted ranges of many intertidal invertebrates, and the relative importance of physical and biological factors on settlement and subsequent mortality, have attracted much attention from ecologists. Most workers have concentrated on rocky shore communities, where patterns of zonation are often very clear (for reviews, see Stephenson & Stephenson, 1949, 1972; Southward, 1958; Lewis, 1955, 1961, 1964), whilst few have looked for such effects within saltmarshes (for reviews, see Long & Mason, 1983; Foster, In Press). Since most saltmarsh invertebrates are infaunal, patterns of zonation are not immediately obvious, but may be of particular interest; the influence of tidal regimes on invertebrate ranges may be more precise in sheltered saltmarsh habitats than on rocky shores, where exposure to wave action is a major confounding variable.

Garfish (Beloniformes, Belonidae) are surface-dwelling, predatory fish characterized by elongate bodies and long beak-like jaws. Most are oceanic, but some species occur in estuaries and rivers. There are thirty-two species worldwide (Collette, 1982), of which until recently only one, Belone belone (L.) was known to be present in the waters of northern Europe. However, the existence of a second species, Belone svetovidovi Collette and Parin, was reported by Dorman (1984) from the south coast of Ireland. To date, thirty-one specimens of this fish have been captured in Courtmacsherry Bay, Co. Cork. This paper gives some details of these fish and how they may be distinguished from B. belone.