Choice Review

Exploration of the ocean floor and the study of marine geologic processes and mineral deposits are matters of increasing interest, and there is considerable new journal literature on geology in the ocean environment. This book-with maps, stratigraphic and geochemical illustrations, and an extensive bibliography-should be of particular value to libraries serving students with potential interest in the marine geology of the Pacific Ocean. It comprises a collection of seven papers on the region from Australia and Papua New Guinea to the Cook Islands and from the equatorial South Pacific to New Zealand. Contributors are Cronan (geology, Imperial College of Science and Technology) and marine geologists from Australia, New Zealand, Britain, and the US. The papers deal with stratigraphy, the hydrocarbon potential, sedimentary geochemistry, near-shore mineral deposits, submarine phosphatic sediments, manganese nodules, and ore mineralization. A more general reference on the ocean floor would be R.N. Anderson's Marine Geology (1986); a more specific reference to marine mineral resources and their mining would be D.S. Cronan's Underwater Minerals (1980).-W.C. Peters, University of Arizona