Abstract Late Minoan IB fine ware pottery includes a number of decorative styles. The most spectacular of these is characterized by motifs, hitherto only rarely deployed by Cretan vase painters, drawn from the marine world. Late Minoan IB marine ware turns up in ritual contexts, which include human sacrifice. The pottery style is likely to reflect, then, not simply a vagary of secular fashion, but a circumstance or circumstances requiring far-reaching religious attention. It is proposed that Late Minoan IB marine ware and the cult activities in which it was deployed were a response to negative effects of the Late Bronze Age Thera eruption on the marine environment of the Aegean.