David Stoddart’s first output on coral reefs was a report from his undergraduate expedition to Belize (then British Honduras) in 1959–1960 (Stoddart, 1960); his last as co-author on the chapter on coral reefs in Volume 4 of the History of the Study of Landforms (Spencer et al., 2008). In between these two outputs, he produced a further 239 items: an astonishing outpouring of scientific papers, reports, monographs, conference proceedings and book chapters; book reviews and commentaries; extensive bibliographies on coral reefs and related topics; and letters to ‘The Times’