Local mesh refinement features have now been added to a number of numerical ocean models. In its crudest form, a high-resolution grid is embedded (or nested) in a coarse-resolution grid, which covers the entire domain, and the two grids interact. The aim of this paper is to review existing two-way grid embedding algorithms. The basic algorithms and specificities related to ocean modelling are first described. Then, we address several important issues: conservation properties, design of interpolation/restriction operators, and noise control techniques.