The Second International Indian Ocean Expedition (IIOE-2): Motivating new exploration in a poorly understood ocean basin (volume 3)

This Deep-Sea Research II special issue is the third volume of scientific papers to emerge from the Second International Indian Ocean Expedition (IIOE-2, Fig. 1). This diverse body of contemporary Indian Ocean research (some motivated by IIOE-2 and others not) includes papers on physical, chemical and biological oceanography, and covers trophic levels ranging from phytoplankton to whales. With this volume the IIOE-2 takes another important step toward achieving its overarching goal, which is to “… advance our understanding of interactions between geologic, oceanic and atmospheric processes that give rise to the complex physical dynamics of the Indian Ocean region, and determine how those dynamics affect climate, extreme events, marine biogeochemical cycles, ecosystems and human populations” (Hood et al., 2015).