The investigations of recovery after pollution in the marine ecosystem referred to in this study confirm several of the expectations derived from theoretical ecology, which were mentioned in the introduction. Thus, the timescale is clearly different for ecological subsystems with the palatial recovering in a water of days or weeks after the end of the pollution, the littoral typically in months or years and the profundal in decades or centuries. Clearly also the recovery process means increase in species diversity, longer foodclaims and more efficient energy transfer to higher trophic levels in the ecosystem. However, in one important aspect the data presented in the studies do not support a consept from theoretical ecology. There is no indication in these studies of an alternative stable position to which the ecosystem would return when the pollution episode removed it from the original balansed state. Therefore, from the studies referred to here it seems that the most pertinent question to study with regard to recovery processes is the time element, it's variation between ecological subsystems, it's dependence on temperature and the interrelation between time fro recovery and size of effected area