During January 24–26, 1988, a meeting at the University of Southern Mississippi campus in Long Beach, Miss., was attended by more than 100 oceanographers from a range of U.S. institutions. The objective of the meeting was to begin preparing a coordinated plan for coastal physical oceanography during the next decade. This plan is then envisioned as the core of a future large-scale interdisciplinary national effort in coastal oceanography. Some preliminary ideas on the subject were given in the report “Coastal Physical Oceaography: The Next Decade” (Eos, November 10, 1987, pp. 1581–1591).