  We establish the existence and uniqueness of both local martingale and local
pathwise solutions of an abstract nonlinear stochastic evolution system. The
primary application of this abstract framework is to infer the local existence
of strong, pathwise solutions to the 3D primitive equations of the oceans and
atmosphere forced by a nonlinear multiplicative white noise. Instead of
developing our results specifically for the 3D primitive equations we choose to
develop them in a slightly abstract framework which covers many related forms
of these equations (atmosphere, oceans, coupled atmosphere-ocean, on the
sphere, on the {\beta}-plane approximation etc and the incompressible
Navier-Stokes equations). In applications, all of the details are given for the
{\beta}-plane approximation of the oceans equations.
