The 10th International Workshop on Modeling the Ocean (IWMO 2018) was hosted by the University of Sao Paulo and held on June 25–28, 2018, at the beautiful coastal city of Santos, Brazil. This old city was founded by the Portuguese in the 1500s and is known for its world’s longest beach garden, the Coffee Museum and the Pele Museum (featuring the famous football player and a local hero). Since the inaugural IWMO meeting in Taiwan in 2009, meetings were held in Asia, Europe, North America, and Australia, but this was the first meeting to be held in South America. With the 10th anniversary of IWMO, we would like to acknowledge the foremost contribution and dedication of Prof. L.-Y. Oey who was one of the founding fathers of IWMO in 2009 (Oey et al. 2010a, b) and who led the organization for 10 successful years, before passing the leadership baton to a new generation of scientists. During this meeting, a special session was held to honor Professor Emeritus George L. Mellor for his pioneering contribution to ocean modeling, which started some 6 decades ago and continues today with his own contribution to this special issue (Mellor 2019). We would like thus to dedicate this special issue to Professor Mellor and his legacy
