The first book of its kind, for general readers and all interested in natural history, the sea and the environment. To many of us the oceans are a mysterious environment, vast expanses of water stretching endlessly over the horizon. But today the ocean means more to Ireland than ever before. It offers new seafood, new products, new sources of energy, new recreational pleasures, new challenges in conservation, and new threats due to climate change. Above all, it offers a new world to the imagination as modern research sheds light on this previously alien world. Ireland’s Ocean casts a net to all of these, gathering together all that we know in a natural history of the seas around us: the Northeast Atlantic, Celtic Sea and Irish Sea. Ireland’s ocean neighbourhood is both intimate and vast, from the pools and kelp forests of the shores to the distant canyons and precipices of the continental shelf - a territory now mapped by the National Seabed Survey. Among its discoveries are astonishing deep-sea coral reefs, teeming with diversity, part of the hidden landscape explored in these pages. The ocean species and ecosystems - lives as microscopic as plankton, as majestic as sharks and whales - are introduced and described, as are the challenges that face both the fish and their human predators. Extensive research into all aspects of the ocean informs Ireland’s Ocean as it opens windows to the life and promise of the seas. As you read you will see this normally hidden world with new understanding and appreciation, aided by the extensive use of maps, photographs and illustrations.