History of oceanography

This research explores the legacy of the Greek community in Alexandria, which was the largest foreign community that left a lasting impact on the city's architecture, economy, and cultural life. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Greek population, which included artisans and skillful workers together with engineers, architects, merchants...etc., played a key role in shaping Alexandria's multicultural identity. Therefore, the study examines unique Greek buildings that vary between schools, villas, houses, cinemas, cafes and businesses to highlight both the tangible and intangible heritage of the Greek community. The study proposes a heritage trail that connects major Greek landmarks across the city and serves as a way to preserve such heritage and share its value with the public. Moreover, the research promotes a more inclusive understanding of Alexandria's past and encourages valorizing the cultural diversity that has shaped the city.

routes for mariners but also represented winds, currents, depths, temperatures, and even biological information in synoptic format. His book The Physical Geography of the Sea remained in print for decades, through numerous editions. His US navy career came to an end in 1861, when he resigned his commission at the start of the American Civil War to join the Confederate navy . This latter service led to the installation of the Richmond monument in 1929, one of five statues honoring Confederates. Of this group, Maury was the only one who was not a general or president and the

The Palazzo Poggi Museum and the Bologna University Library hold several thousand woodblocks created by the celebrated naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522‑1605). Among them, a recently discovered woodblock depicts an American volcano. Our analysis of sixteenth-century manuscripts, atlases and printed works in the Aldrovandi collection aims to shed light on the channels through which information and images flowed about the nature of the New World, and on how they reached Bologna. This network of channels highlights the strong connections between the Italian Peninsula and the American territories of the Spanish Crown. The paper establishes that these channels were crucial to Aldrovandi in creating his first printed image of an American volcano, with extensive references to Mount Etna and the use of the taxonomic category of mons flammivomus.

T he Egyptian society today is facing many socio-economical, political and cultural challenges that are directly influencing the living standards and circumstances of its members despite their position in the society's hierarchy. The most important of these challenges is the struggle between the Inherited and the Imported that takes the modernization processes that were repeatedly implemented by the different rulers and elite class of the society as its active field. These modernization processes almost always mean Westernization. They have resulted in the separation of the society into two distinct segments; a Westernized rich and powerful high-middle class and up, and a more or less traditional poor and powerless low-middle class and down. As a direct result of these challenges the society is experiencing problems of inequality, class conflict, search for identity, among many others. These problems have a great impact on the living standards of the majority of the society. Additionally, they greatly influence the power relations both between the different segments of the society and between the society as a whole and the Western societies. This left the colonized societies with collapsing social, economical and political structures.

, the Oceanographic community of the world lost a dear colleague, friend, and great scientist, Henry Melson Stommel. He was 71 years old, and died of heart failure, following surgery for liver cancer. Hank Stommel's contributions to physical oceanography span the entire field. Beginning in 1948, with his paper on the western intensification of the circulation, he continued to break new ground, developing ideas of the thermocline as a boundary layer, inertial boundary currents, the deep circulation with its western boundary undercurrent, double diffusion, thermohaline oscillations and many more. Hank's style was always the same-he began by grappling with observations until he could visualize the underlying process, and then he would develop the simplest physical or mathematical model that could expose the process. Hank was active in the field for 45 years and his impact has been enormous, in a sense transforming the study of oceanography through example. Although much of his impact is measured in terms of ideas, Hank was an active seagoing oceanographer and a strong and vocal supporter for field programs. Hank was a self-proclaimed amateur, in the original sense of the word (from the Latin, amator), exploring the world with his passionate desire to understand how it worked. His agile mind was free from pretense. Hank shared his ideas and his delight with anyone who

sea otters. Importantly however, Lorimer provokes readers to think about which of our assumptions remain valid in the Anthropocene and to acknowledge that conservation science is a sociopolitical beast, with attending values-and every choice we make costs lives. After reading this book, it seems more pressing that biologists, ecologists, geographers, and philosophers (among others) join forces and tackle these tough questions in theory and practice. We need real integration. Aldo Leopold said, "one of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds." What seems worse today is that, even if we share common viewpoints, we have become so specialized and institutionalized through the demands of contemporary science and education that we have lost the ability to speak to one another. Lorimer's volume offers a platform to bridge this gap and engage in more meaningful discussions about saving species.

This paper looks at attempts by the Egyptian government during the twentieth century to protect and preserve the musical heritage of Egypt and links them to trends in the development of Egyptian music. The paper contains five sections, and contains recommendations for the development of policies tailored to the specific characteristics of Egyptian cultural heritage. First, it is argued that government initiatives have been poorly planned and poorly followed up, and this is illustrated by example of the 1932 Arabic Music Conference in Cairo. Second, the appropriation of Egyptian cultural heritage by the state through the use of intellectual property rights is examined and placed in the context of the development of an Egyptian cultural inferiority complex. It is argued that these rights are inappropriate for an orally-derived musical tradition such as Egypt's. The efforts of Egyptian cultural governmental organizations to promote and preserve the country’s folk and traditional mu...

Is there a mesopelagic protist fauna composed of species different from that of the overlying surface community? Does the mesopelagic community show seasonal changes in abundances and species composition? We addressed these questions by considering three distinct groups in which species identification is relatively unambiguous: tintinnid ciliates, phaeodarian radiolarians, and amphisolenid dinoflagellates. We sampled weekly at 250 m and 30 m depth from January to June a deep-water coastal site characterized by seasonal changes in water column structure; notably, in winter the mixed layer extends down into mesopelagic depths. We found a deep-water community of tintinnid ciliates comprised of forms apparently restricted to deep waters and species also found in the surface layer. This latter group was dominant during the winter mixis period when tintinnid concentrations were highest and subsequently declined with water column stratification. Phaeodarian radiolarians and the amphisoleni...

In this article I reflect on my experience as a teacher in the first Warsaw Science Diplomacy School, which was hosted at the European Academy of Diplomacy in 2020. I organized a module on science diplomacy and the relations between Europe and Africa, building on the work I had been developing as a case study author in the context of the H2020 “Inventing a shared Science Diplomacy for Europe” (InsSciDE) project. I discussed the diplomatic role of a Portuguese nineteenth-century zoologist, José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage (1823-1907), who became Portugal’s Minister of Foreign Affairs during a critical period in the Scramble for Africa, in which his country competed with France and Belgium for international recognition of colonial sovereignty over the Congo region. I showed how Bocage’s political career was propelled by his insertion in scientific and colonial networks, and how he deployed them while in power to gain leverage in difficult diplomatic negotiations. The students of the Warsaw Science Diplomacy School 2020 appreciated the extent to which European colonialism in Africa recruited both science and diplomacy for political purposes, its enduring consequences on the diplomatic relations between the two continents, and how this case can illuminate the current race for power in Africa that has now drawn in new contenders, such as China and the United States.

Nineteenth-century zoological collections consisted of large series of animals, which had been trapped, uprooted, hunted, killed, put into containers, dried, and preserved. From distant far-flung outposts overseas, colonial collections were shipped to central metropolitan institutions where they were claimed as a crucial part of the understanding of global biodiversity. Knowledge about nature was reliant on such scientific specimens and, therefore, dependent on fieldwork, which comprised much more than the act itself of sampling nature. Collecting from the field is a matter of access to places, materials, tools, and people with the know-how to find, capture, and interpret nature and, often, to prepare animals as specimens. Although different layers of labor, expertise, and knowledge lie behind zoological collections, much of it was produced and negotiated outside museums’ walls. Using the historical documentation of zoological collections in the Museu Nacional de Lisboa in the secon...

Is there a mesopelagic protist fauna composed of species different from that of the overlying surface community? Does the mesopelagic community show seasonal changes in abundances and species composition? We addressed these questions by considering three distinct groups in which species identification is relatively unambiguous: tintinnid ciliates, phaeodarian radiolarians, and amphisolenid dinoflagellates. We sampled weekly at 250 m and 30 m depth from January to June a deep-water coastal site characterized by seasonal changes in water column structure; notably, in winter the mixed layer extends down into mesopelagic depths. We found a deep-water community of tintinnid ciliates comprised of forms apparently restricted to deep waters and species also found in the surface layer. This latter group was dominant during the winter mixis period when tintinnid concentrations were highest and subsequently declined with water column stratification. Phaeodarian radiolarians and the amphisoleni...

This paper analyses the pioneering global voyages of HMS Challenger and SMS Gazelle in the 1870s-a time of rapid scientific advances and technological innovation. The voyage of Challenger has become well known as marking the start of the global-scale science of oceanography. The voyage of the Gazelle is much less well known despite the two voyages ending in the same year, 1876, and having similar geographical and scientific scope. Rather than focussing on the scientific achievements, the paper concentrates on how the expeditions were planned and executed, the lives and characters of the personnel involved, and the underlying motivation behind the voyages. The paper presents the author's translations of key elements of the Gazelle reports as a means of introducing the Gazelle expedition to an English-speaking readership.

Title Purse seine fishery management in Malaysia : an output control for sustainable fisheries [an abstract of entire text] Author(s) Harlyan, Ledhyane Ika Citation 北海道大学. 博士(水産科学) 甲第13736号 Issue Date 2019-09-25 Doc URL http://hdl.handle.net/2115/75833 Type theses (doctoral abstract of entire text) Note この博士論文全文の閲覧方法については、以下のサイトをご参照ください。 Note(URL) https://www.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dissertations/copy-guides/ File Information Ledhyane_Ika_Harlyan_summary.pdf

Is there a mesopelagic protist fauna composed of species different from that of the overlying surface community? Does the mesopelagic community show seasonal changes in abundances and species composition? We addressed these questions by considering three distinct groups in which species identification is relatively unambiguous: tintinnid ciliates, phaeodarian radiolarians, and amphisolenid dinoflagellates. We sampled weekly at 250 m and 30 m depth from January to June a deep-water coastal site characterized by seasonal changes in water column structure; notably, in winter the mixed layer extends down into mesopelagic depths. We found a deep-water community of tintinnid ciliates comprised of forms apparently restricted to deep waters and species also found in the surface layer. This latter group was dominant during the winter mixis period when tintinnid concentrations were highest and subsequently declined with water column stratification. Phaeodarian radiolarians and the amphisoleni...

sea otters. Importantly however, Lorimer provokes readers to think about which of our assumptions remain valid in the Anthropocene and to acknowledge that conservation science is a sociopolitical beast, with attending values-and every choice we make costs lives. After reading this book, it seems more pressing that biologists, ecologists, geographers, and philosophers (among others) join forces and tackle these tough questions in theory and practice. We need real integration. Aldo Leopold said, "one of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds." What seems worse today is that, even if we share common viewpoints, we have become so specialized and institutionalized through the demands of contemporary science and education that we have lost the ability to speak to one another. Lorimer's volume offers a platform to bridge this gap and engage in more meaningful discussions about saving species.

The subtitle of Naomi Oreskes’ new book, “How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know about the Ocean,” makes her thesis clear from the outset: taking money from someone to fund one’s research probably taints the research with the goals and motives of the funder; because tainted research is not believable research, the published results are perhaps not to be trusted. Oreskes’ point of view is presented in the book’s Introduction, which says, “There is empirical evidence to demonstrate that scientists have been overly optimistic about their ability to maintain their intellectual integrity, particularly in cases where the desiderata of their funders are obvious, as with tobacco or pharmaceutical research.” (page 1)

Operations at the global scale, then, are ways of producing global environments. Efforts such as those discussed in the 1958 symposium turned large chunks of the earth into operating spaces of orientation. They extended the collective mapping of reality provided by modern technologies and sciences. By navigating the three- dimensional oceanic space, Cold Warriors were doing more than discovering a pre- existing sonic reality. It was a process of active sonification, of tuning the ocean to new sound frequencies. I will return at the end to how this sonification allows us to reimagine the oceans before navies across the world turned them into a human environment. But first, looking at the oceanographic and political geography of sonification will reveal the transformative powers of mapping.

The development of new technologies in science is a balance between existence and use. There are three versions of this duality-something is built and users come, something is built and users don't come, and, finally, potential users show up but the ballpark has not yet been built. In each instance there is a combination of three factors at work. The first is a scientific need for a type of data or analysis. The second is a technology or technique developed to meet the need; and the third is a perception that using the technology is somehow "better" that the existing tools and that the tool is easy to use. This work examines closely the development of a tool within oceanographythe Stommel diagram for displaying the time and space spectra of oceanographic phenomena-and the spread of the use of the diagram to other disciplines. The diagram was the product of a number of elements-the mind of a truly original oceanographer, the development of equipment able to collect the detailed temporal and spatial data used to create the plot, and the rise of "big oceanography", which led Stommel to argue graphically for taking care in the design of expeditions. Understanding the spread of the Stommel plot provides a viewpoint for examining the unexpectedly slow development of multi-dimensional geographic information systems (GIS). The development of GIS's began in the 1970's. Data structures to hold multi-dimensional data have been developed, tools for multidimensional map algebra have been created, and test applications have been developed. The current non-development of multi-dimensional GIS is examined as a background for creating and disseminating GeoModeler, a prototype of scientific GIS able to ingest and display multi-dimensional data. Taking advantage of recent technical developments, we have created a scientific GIS that can display three-dimensional oceanographic data. GeoModeler is used to visually explore and analyze the relationship between water temperature and larval walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramma) growth in Shelikof Strait, Alaska.

This paper analyses the pioneering global voyages of HMS Challenger and SMS Gazelle in the 1870s-a time of rapid scientific advances and technological innovation. The voyage of Challenger has become well known as marking the start of the global-scale science of oceanography. The voyage of the Gazelle is much less well known despite the two voyages ending in the same year, 1876, and having similar geographical and scientific scope. Rather than focussing on the scientific achievements, the paper concentrates on how the expeditions were planned and executed, the lives and characters of the personnel involved, and the underlying motivation behind the voyages. The paper presents the author's translations of key elements of the Gazelle reports as a means of introducing the Gazelle expedition to an English-speaking readership.

sea otters. Importantly however, Lorimer provokes readers to think about which of our assumptions remain valid in the Anthropocene and to acknowledge that conservation science is a sociopolitical beast, with attending values-and every choice we make costs lives. After reading this book, it seems more pressing that biologists, ecologists, geographers, and philosophers (among others) join forces and tackle these tough questions in theory and practice. We need real integration. Aldo Leopold said, "one of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds." What seems worse today is that, even if we share common viewpoints, we have become so specialized and institutionalized through the demands of contemporary science and education that we have lost the ability to speak to one another. Lorimer's volume offers a platform to bridge this gap and engage in more meaningful discussions about saving species.

routes for mariners but also represented winds, currents, depths, temperatures, and even biological information in synoptic format. His book The Physical Geography of the Sea remained in print for decades, through numerous editions. His US navy career came to an end in 1861, when he resigned his commission at the start of the American Civil War to join the Confederate navy (Grady, 2015). This latter service led to the installation of the Richmond monument in 1929, one of five statues honoring Confederates. Of this group, Maury was the only one who was not a general or president and the

A biographical sketch of John Hutton Stenhouse (1865–1931) is provided. This focuses on his contributions to ornithology in Scotland and to Scottish ornithology, most notably through his long association with the Royal Scottish Museum. His involvements with bird migration studies on Fair Isle and his influence on the subsequent development of a permanent bird observatory on the island are discussed

meant chiefly fillding ways to reduce fallout. The other tests explored the physical effects of nuclear explosions and how they might be applied toward practical ends. Initially, nuclear excavation-cheaply moving vast amounts of earth to help build harbors, canals, and other civil engineering projects-held the most promise. When this goal proved unattainable after 6 tests in 7 years (1962-1968), the main effort shifted to extracting oil, gas, or minerals from deep underground deposits, which also proved unworkable, this time after 3 tests spread over 7 years (1967-1973)2 Ultimately, Plowshare succeeded in none of its aims, a failure that owed something to technological misjudgments but more to a changing sociopolitical climate. One large factor in Plowshare's failure was the problem of radioactivity. Ostensibly a straightforward question of health risk-which could presumably be addressed with facts and figures-the underlying issues may well have had more to do with public unease about nuclear matters and growing public mistrust of government-which could not. Radiation hazards, in any event, always remained the major spur to public opposition, and this essay focuses on radiation safety aspects of the Plowshare test program.

The United States oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-1873) wa~ one of thc imponant correspondents of thc Prussian natumhst Alexander von Humboldt ( 1769-1859). A\ both arc regarded lli> ptonecrs of marine \ciences by the oceanography community, it b wonh having a closer Iook at their intcraction. 1t ts not widcly known that Maury visited Humboldt in Ber1in in 1853 after attendmg thc .,lntcrnattOnal Maritime Meteorological Conference" in Brusseh. Humbo1dt had bccn very intcrcstcd in allmarine matters ever since his expcdition to America (1799-1804). ln his ,.Personal narmtive" andin latcr works, Humboldt covered oceanographic queMions in somc detai1, partly using his own scries of regular Observations at sea that included surfacc temperatures. currcnt\ and other matters. Maury, a navy officcr, had a very different, non-acadernie background. As hcad of thc Naval Observatory m Washington, he issucd wind and current charts bascd on ab<,tract Iogs sent to him both...

The development of new technologies in science is a balance between existence and use. There are three versions of this duality-something is built and users come, something is built and users don't come, and, finally, potential users show up but the ballpark has not yet been built. In each instance there is a combination of three factors at work. The first is a scientific need for a type of data or analysis. The second is a technology or technique developed to meet the need; and the third is a perception that using the technology is somehow "better" that the existing tools and that the tool is easy to use. This work examines closely the development of a tool within oceanographythe Stommel diagram for displaying the time and space spectra of oceanographic phenomena-and the spread of the use of the diagram to other disciplines. The diagram was the product of a number of elements-the mind of a truly original oceanographer, the development of equipment able to collect the detailed temporal and spatial data used to create the plot, and the rise of "big oceanography", which led Stommel to argue graphically for taking care in the design of expeditions. Understanding the spread of the Stommel plot provides a viewpoint for examining the unexpectedly slow development of multi-dimensional geographic information systems (GIS). The development of GIS's began in the 1970's. Data structures to hold multi-dimensional data have been developed, tools for multidimensional map algebra have been created, and test applications have been developed. The current non-development of multi-dimensional GIS is examined as a background for creating and disseminating GeoModeler, a prototype of scientific GIS able to ingest and display multi-dimensional data. Taking advantage of recent technical developments, we have created a scientific GIS that can display three-dimensional oceanographic data. GeoModeler is used to visually explore and analyze the relationship between water temperature and larval walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramma) growth in Shelikof Strait, Alaska.

During his tenure of the latter chair, he realised that an acquaintance with the principles of natural philosophy would be invaluable to mechanics, and this led him to establish, in addition to his usual class, one of a more popular character, for those whose pursuits did not allow them to follow the routine of academic study. These lectures were illustrated by numerous experiments and could be understood by those who did not have the advantage of a mathematical education. He continued to hold this class every Tuesday and Thursday during the session to the close of his life. About this time he commenced making a private collection of scientific apparatus and natural history specimens, which formed the nucleus of the Andersonian Museum, now dispersed. John Anderson died on 13 January 1796, bequeathing by his will, of 7 May 1795, the whole of his property, with a few trifling exceptions, 'to the public, for the good of mankind, and the improvement of science, in an institution to be denominated 'Anderson's University'. Initially, however, the institution established under this will, was known as Anderson's Institution. In 1828, it changed its name to Anderson's University. The origins of Anderson's Medical School date from 1800 when Dr John Burns commenced lectures on anatomy and surgery.

Since its founding in 1808, the Wernerian Natural History Society has been a learned society interested in the field of Natural History.  The society was presided over by the esteemed Professor of Natural History, Robert Jameson,  and was formed ostensibly for the comprehensive study of the sciences and Natural History in particular.  The society attracted notable members such as John Barclay, John Hutton Balfour, Robert Brown, Edward Forbes, John, and Harry Goodsir.  The Wernerian Natural History Society remained in existence for almost fifty years, with Professor Jameson remaining its president until his own death in 1854.  Between 1811 and 1839, eight volumes of memoirs were published, to which Jameson contributed more than a dozen papers on geographical and mineralogical topics, as well as zoology and botany.  After 1839, proceedings were published in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal which Jameson personally edited.  This work will focus on Professor Robert Jameson and the association with John and Harry Goodsir and their association with the Wernerian Natural History Society.

Paul Sutter closes his essay on the state of the field of environmental history by calling attention to the relatively short time during which humans have transformed the planeta point that certainly applies to the ocean. Anthropogenically induced global climate change is affecting ocean temperature and acidity. Overfishing has not only decimated marine populations but has emptied entire levels of the marine food web. Bottom trawling has scarred virtually all the commercially reachable seafloor. Attention to marine environmental issues has lagged behind similar attention to land by a century or more; only since the 1990s has the ocean's environmental status gripped the attention of mainstream media and ordinary people. 1 Although the ocean seems remote, marine environmental activists and ocean boosters rightly note the many ways that all people are tightly connected to it. The seas provide food, energy, communication, and transportation of the goods and raw materials that fuel the global economy. Threats to oceans and the uses made of ocean space and ocean resources have prompted the formation of international legal regimes and agreements. The majority of the world's population lives along coasts-and the proportion of coastal dwellers is on the increase-therefore even more people will be involved in the challenges associated with sea-level rise and the increasing frequency and intensity of storms. 2 Such interactions between people and ocean are grist for historical scholarship. Sutter acknowledges environmental history's terrestrial bias and notes the small but growing body of literature that recognizes the ocean's place in history. This notice has happened at an auspicious time, because environmental history's embrace of hybridity opens a space for the sea and other environments like it. Like land, the ocean is a natural environment that is-perhaps to a greater degree even than terra firma-knowable through cultural lenses. Technology necessarily mediates understanding of the vast depths of the ocean and even

List of figures ix List of tables xiii Notes on contributors xv Foreword xvii Introduction 1 MARGARET DEACON AND COLIN SUMMERHAYES PARTI The historical context 25 1 The Challenger Expedition: the end of an era or a new beginning? 27 A. L. RICE 2 'Big science' in Victorian Britain: the Challenger Expedition (1872-6) and its Report (1881-95) 49

approved: Dawn J. Wright The development of new technologies in science is a balance between existence and use. There are three versions of this duality – something is built and users come, something is built and users don’t come, and, finally, potential users show up but the ballpark has not yet been built. In each instance there is a combination of three factors at work. The first is a scientific need for a type of data or analysis. The second is a technology or technique developed to meet the need; and the third is a perception that using the technology is somehow "better" that the existing tools and that the tool is easy to use. This work examines closely the development of a tool within oceanography – the Stommel diagram for displaying the time and space spectra of oceanographic phenomena – and the spread of the use of the diagram to other disciplines. The diagram was the product of a number of elements the mind of a truly original oceanographer, the development of eq...

This article has two aims: first, to understand the co-production of climate science and the state, and second, to provide a test case for Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory. To these ends, the article reconstructs the historical formation of a US climate science field, with an analytic focus on inter-field dynamics and heterogeneous networking practices. Drawing from primary- and secondary-source materials, the historical analysis focuses on relations between scientists and state actors from the 1930s to the 1960s. The account shows how actors with positions linking scientific and bureaucratic fields constructed critical nodes and ‘hinges’ that co-produced war-making and state expansion on the one hand, and a relatively autonomous climate science field on the other. The analysis explains the emergence of climate science by focusing on the WWII-era transformation of meteorology and oceanography into distinct disciplines, the emergence of ‘basic’ research as a central principle of post-w...

The roots of modern Marine sciences as commonly meant stemmed from the work of Luigi Ferdinando Marsili (Bologna, 1658-1730), an eclectic military architect who produced the first "scientific" descriptions of the seabed and its inhabitants. Coeval of the natural philosopher Vallisneri and introduced by Newton to the Royal Society of London, Marsili represents an ideal link between the observation of Nature according to the method developed in the sixteenth century by his co-citizen Ulisse Aldrovandi and the modern oceanographic disciplines. Curiously but perhaps not accidentally, the Institute of Marine Geology of CNR, now incorporated into the ISMAR, was founded by Raimondo Selli in Bologna, Marsili's birthplace and Selli himself named after his ancient precursor one of the most impressive submarine volcanoes of the Mediterranean.

The seed of oceanography germinated out of man’s interest about
the regions beneath the ocean surface as well as waves, the rise and
fall of the tides and other coastal processes. Gradually this curiosity
extended to the search for food, minerals, energy, oil and natural gas,
which ultimately laid the foundation stone of oceanography. The early
history of oceanography dates back to 7250 B.C. when sea trading
used to occur between the Greek mainland and Aegian island of
Melos. However, people in those days had very little concept on ocean
piloting and vessel manufacturing technology. This made their voyages
unsafe and risky particularly during storms, strong waves and other
natural calamities. The period from 4000 to 2000 B.C. was the age of
construction and the development of the art of ship building, ocean
piloting etc. by the Egyptians and Polynesians.
Around 1500 B.C., the Phoenicians, traded from North Africa
across the Mediterranean Sea and made long voyages of discovery
in the Pacific Ocean. Between 1500 and 500 B.C., the Arab traders
explored the Indian Ocean. However at this time, the sea was only
a dangerous route for these early sailors and this situation continued
for hundreds of years. In A.D. 127-151, Ptolemy, produced the first
world atlas and established world boundaries with a value of 29,000
km for the earth’s circumference. His atlas listed more than 8000 places
by latitude and longitude. However the atlas was faulty from various
points of view. After Ptolemy, the Vikings (A.D. 700-1000) colonized
Iceland by 900 and settled Greenland, where they remained until the
fourteenth century. Extending their voyages farther west, they reached
Vinland, or northeastern North America, in 985. Early in the fifteenth
century the Chinese organized seven voyages to explore the Pacific and
Indian Oceans. The great age of European discovery began in 1487
when Bartholomeu Dias sailed around the Cape of Good Hope into the
Indian Ocean. Sir Martin Frobisher made three voyages in 1570s and
Henry Hudson made four voyages between 1607 and 1610 around the
north side of North America.
In the beginning of seventeenth century, there was renewed
interest among navigators in developing better charts and more
accurate navigation techniques. Captain James Cook made three great
voyages to chart the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779. During his
voyages, he explored and charted much of the South Pacific and the
coasts of New Zealand, Australia and northwest North America. He
made soundings to depths of 400 m and logged accurate observations
of winds, currents and water temperatures.
In the United States, Benjamin Franklin gave information about
the amount of time required for news and cargo to travel between
England and America and in this way the oceans captured the interest
of naturalists and biologists in the eighteenth century.
One of the early professional naturalists who made significant
contributions to marine biology was Charles Darwin. He has become
famous for his theories on evolution, which was commissioned early in
his life as a naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle expeditions (1831-1836). He
collected and studied numerous marine organisms during this famous
voyage, which eventually lead to his famous subsidence theory of coral
reef formation and a classification of barnacles that is still used by the
modern biologists as the foundation of their research works. Another
English naturalist, Edward Forbes (1815-54) began a systematic survey
of marine life around the British Isles and the Mediterranean and
Aegean Seas. He collected organisms from deep water and proposed
a system of ocean depth zones, on the basis of distribution of animal
populations. He stated in his “Azoic theory” that marine life did not
exist on seabed at depths exceeding 300 fathoms (1800 ft). However,
this concept was soon disproved when the Artic explorer Sir John Ross
had found worms and other animals in the bottom samples at over
1800 m (6000 ft) depth in Baffin Bay. The investigation of the minute
drifting plants and animals of the ocean was not seriously undertaken
until the German scientist Johannes Muller began to examine these
organisms microscopically. Victor Hensen introduced the quantitative
study of these minute drifting organisms and gave them the name
plankton in 1887. Although science developed in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, there was little scientific interest in the sea beyond
the practical needs for navigation, harnessing food resources and
safety. The sea was considered during the early period as the reservoir
of fishes, edible molluscs and seaweeds.
Oceanography as a modern science is usually dated from the
Challenger expedition. The Challenger Reports laid the foundation
for the science of oceanography. British naturalist John Murray and
Scottish naturalist Charles Wyville Thompson led the expedition
between 1872-1876.It was the first expedition organized specifically
to gather data on a wide range of ocean features, including ocean
temperatures, seawater chemistry, currents, marine life and the geology
of the seafloor. The Challenger expedition revealed the existence of the
Mariana Trench in the western Pacific, where the seafloor is 26,850 ft,
or more than 4 miles deep (8,200 m). The deepest place in all oceans is
near where the Challenger took its sounding. It is called the ‘Challenger
Deep’ and it is 37,800 ft deep (11,524 m). The expedition also revealed
the first broad outline of the shape of the ocean basin, including a rise
in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that is now known as the Mid-
Atlantic Ridge. Scientists compiled the first systematic plots of currents
and temperatures in the oceans. The Challenger Expedition’s exciting
discoveries encouraged other countries to take interest in the scientific
research on oceans and since then oceanography started to transform
from the science of mere description to the science of quantification.
During the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century,
the Scandinavian oceanographers were particularly active in the study
of water movement. A Norwegian zoologist Fridtj of Nansen collected
valuable oceanographic, magnetic and meteorological information in
the Arctic. He conducted a series of tests on the direction of ice drift in
the Arctic by freezing a vessel into the polar ice pack and drifting with it

hat do Cold War military funding, the golden years of postwar oceanography, the appalling state of our oceans today, and agnotology-the study of the cultural production of ignorance-have to do with each other? Plenty, as historian of science Naomi Oreskes makes clear in her impressive and authoritative new book, Science on a Mission. Over the past two decades, Oreskes has helped transform how scholars understand the history of scientific and political debates over continental drift and anthropogenic climate change. Her latest work weaves together insights from these and other intellectual spheres to deliver a crucial message: Patronage of knowledge production-that is, who pays for science-matters deeply. Scientific work at sea is expensive, and military financial and logistical support has enabled researchers to elucidate long-standing mysteries of the deep such as abyssal circulation, plate tectonics, and seafloor hydrothermal vents. Yet