Indo-West Pacific Mangroves

Abstract

There are biogeographical, palaeontological, biological and historical reasons why it is useful to consider the Seas from the East coast of Africa eastwards towards the western Pacific as a major geographic domain, later to be conveniently sub-divided into Regions and Sub-regions for detailed studies. Though the mangroves are the go-between for land and sea, man is a terra firma species and as such, the habit prevails to describe continents and their margins, rather than the oceans and their margins: oceanography was recognised as a distinct science only in the nineteenth century. To write on function and management of the mangroves of Asia and the Pacific, it is preferable to consider the seas that border the thousands of kilometres of coasts that form the transition between land and sea. Mangroves are a gift of the tides; sea and brackish waters disperse their seeds and propagules. They are the living place of aquatic, terrestrial and aerial flora and fauna and they would not exist without the interaction of land and sea. Mangroves form a special domain of their own: the mangrove ecosystem that thrives only in the intertidal belt. It is from this angle that we will consider the mangroves of the Indo-West Pacific.