A call for papers on the topic "Understanding Oceanographic and Ecosystem Characteristics of the Persian Gulf: A Poorly Understood system" is open as part of the Deep-Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography journal. To be submitted by December 22, 2024.

The Persian Gulf (PG) is a shallow marginal sea of the Indian ocean and sits on top of the largest hydrocarbon reserve in the world, which makes this area as one of the most important strategic waterways in the world and extremely vulnerable basin to any perturbation. Despite massive changes in the Gulf's biogeochemistry and ecosystems, the PG has been the subject of extraordinary neglect by modern oceanographers and our knowledge on its oceanographic and ecosystem characteristics is in short supply. There is now a new and urgent need to understand the current state of the PG environment and its processes.

Topics to be included:

• Physical, chemical and biological oceanography, marine geology, biogeochemistry, living marine resources and marine protected areas;
• Observations and modeling: from physics to fish and from the surface to the deep sea;
• Ecosystem responses to environmental variability and change, human perturbations, climate change and extreme events;
• Blue carbon ecosystems: mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrasses

When submitting your manuscript select the article type “VSI: Ocean. Charc. of PG”. Please submit your manuscript before the submission deadline December 22, 2024.

All submissions deemed suitable to be sent for peer review will be reviewed by at least two independent reviewers. Once your manuscript is accepted, it will go into production, and will be simultaneously published in the current regular issue and pulled into the online Special Issue. Articles from this Special Issue will appear in different regular issues of the journal, though they will be clearly marked and branded as Special Issue articles.