Turbulent fluctuations of wind, temperature and humidity at heights up to a few hundred metres have been measured over the open sea by instruments supported by a tethered balloon. Wave-induced motion of the ship from which the balloon was flown produced unwanted contributions to the measured turbulence, but in light or moderate winds it has been possible to make allowances for these effects and to obtainusefulestimates for vertical fluxes of heat and moisture: the calculated momentum fluxes in contrast appear less reliable and to obtain satisfactory values will require stabilization of the tethering point of the balloon cable. Some observations made in generally unstable conditions near OWS ' J' yield a value of (1.8 f 0.7) x 10-3 for CE in the bulk aerodynamic formulation for evaporation ( E = ~C E (40qio)(Ulu -U,)) and suggest that compared to the vertical moisture flux the heat flux may often have an insignificant rBle in determining the buoyancy flux and hence the turbulence structure in the bulk of the boundary layer.On playback of the turbulence data the signals were demultiplexed and after frequency-