The continental shelf seas play an important role as the high energy boundary zones of the deep ocean where much of the ocean's tidal and wave energies are dissipated. The North Sea is an archetypal representative of such seas. This book brings the principal results from the North Sea Project which were presented at a discussion meeting organized by the Royal Society, and also sets them in the context of other related studies. The papers within the book were originally published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series A (Physical Sciences and Engineering).