Proceedings of a symposium held in Sydney, 1982. The symposium was closely linked to an allied session on Antarctic marine biology, the aim of which was to report on Australia's contribution to the international research project BIOMASS (Biological Investigation of Marine Antarctic Systems and Stocks) and some overlap occurred between the two. These papers are not comfined to work related directly to BIOMASS, however. The scope of the symposium included current information about seal species from southern temperate waters around Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, reproduction and lactation in Antarctic seals, palaeontological investigations of southern hemisphere cetaceans, and the results of aerial surveys of whales around the Australian coast.