Environmental Studies of a Marine Ecosystem reports the temporal and spatial variation of both the living and nonliving resources of the south Texas outer continental shelf. As the last major study to have been conducted before the Ixtoc oil spill, it is of great importance as a record of the baseline conditions and ecosystem characteristics for both biologists and chemists studying the effects of the Campeche disaster on the marine environment. The book is the culmination of three years of field studies conducted for the Bureau of Land Management and contains information on the climatology, hydrology, and sedimentology of the region as well as data on the pelagic and benthic biota, environmental hydrocarbons and trace metals, and the microbiology of the area. In addition to the ecosystem description, the data are integrated to expose ecological relationships that exist and to identify those specific variables which are most important for the assessment and management of environmentally damaging impacts to the area.