This is the third installment of Gary Griggs’ very popular bi-weekly"Our Ocean Backyard" column that appears in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. The book includes four and a half years of ocean articles that were published between 2018 and 2023. Gary’s stories, which draw upon our rich history of ocean exploration and discovery, are written for anyone with an interest in the oceans - not just in Monterey Bay or the central coast - and shed much needed light on what we can expect in the years and decades to come.