The contributions in this Volume, the fourth in the series Bioorganic Marine Chemistry, encompass topics which are of current concern and highlight the on-going evolution in this area of research. The growing importance of long-chain polyethers with their remarkable biological properties could not be foreseen in 1981, when the first marine representative of this class of compounds, okadaic acid, was described. Since then, the Gulf to Mexico red tide agents, the brevetoxins, and a ciguatera-causing compound, ciguatoxin, among others, have been structurally defined. Uemura, who has been...