While the European Landscape Convention adopted in Florence in 2000 by the European Council offers a public-action framework through a normative definition, the marine and submarine dimensions of landscapes are attracting growing interest from researchers worldwide. At a time when marine-conservation objectives are strongly endorsed by the Convention on Biological Diversity, the French Marine Protected Areas Agency, a public institution under the governance of the French Ministry of the Environment, has gathered prominent experts to draft the very first interdisciplinary overview of underwater seascapes, so as to initiate and lend direction to a wider reflection on this emerging research topic.

From the serpentine "Champie" of Lake Champlain to the venerable "Nessie" of Loch Ness, extraordinary-and un-explained-creatures of the deep have been reported in sightings throughout the twentieth century. Now, two of the world's leading cryptozoological investigators provide a globetrotting field guide to when, where, and what kind of mysterious aquatic beasts have gripped the public—and sometimes the scientific—imagination. Filled with comprehensive drawings, classifications, and maps, their book offers an invaluable and unusual resource for the intrepidly curious to investigate these sightings firsthand or to simply enjoy the fascinating accounts that others have given.

Landscape ecology has been a discrete, established discipline since at least 1980. Its marine counterpart, seascape ecology, is barely a decade old, its first applications dating from the early 2010s. Lack of perception of the marine environment hampers the adoption of many landscape ecology approaches to the sea. Seascape ecology relies on special technologies such as remote sensing (either acoustic or optical), robotics, and scuba diving. Both disciplines deal with the spatial configuration of ecosystems and consider environmental heterogeneity and dynamics as the main subjects of study and the key for ecosystem functioning and persistence. Seascape is here intended as the totality of natural and anthropogenic characters of a marine region. To the geologist, it is defined by sedimentology and underwater geomorphology, to the biologist by the nature of the living cover of the seafloor, to the ecologist by the relationships among functional processes and the spatial organization of ecosystems. The goal of this research topic is to encourage original research, case studies, reviews, and viewpoints to identify research priority gaps and possibly contribute to filling them in. We will appreciate, in particular, manuscripts dealing with recent advances such as high-resolution habitat mapping; underwater soundscape and biophony; development, application and validation of biotic indices to assess seafloor integrity (as requested, for instance, by recent European Directives). Papers of interest may discuss the multivarious facets of stability and describe resistance and resilience patterns, the role of stress and disturbance, regime shift and phase shift, or may take up the challenge of integrating coastal landscape and seascape analyses. Studies of long-term series are welcome, as well as methodological improvements, and macroecological approaches on the importance of species diversity and connectivity in seascape organization.

A beautifully written and illustrated book exploring the nature and significance of reefs, particularly of Australia's World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef.;