This book focuses on marine and estuarine soft sediments as complex and essential habitats for an astonishing variety of animals and plants whose lifestyles are intimately bound up with sediment structure. It discusses sediments as habitats first, then takes in turn the ecosystems found on sandy shores, mudflats and segrass beds, salt marshes and mangrove swamps, and life below the tidemarks. Adaptations of the organisms are fully described, and each chapter ends with a section on techniques. Later chapters discuss estuarine and lagoonal habitats, both of whoch contain primarily soft...