History of Oceanography

Chapter 11

HISTORY OF OCEANOGRAPHY

I.  Early History

A.  Greeks

1.  Pytheas determined how to find latitude

2.  Eratosthenes made a very close measurement of the Earth’s circumference (about 40,000 km or 25,000 mi)

3.  Aristotle catalogued 180 species of marine animals

B. 
Polynesians spread from Asia to Micronesia, to Melanesia, then to Polynesia. Hawaii and Easter Island were some of the later islands they settled. They used stick charts, made of sticks and shells, to diagram the islands.

C.  Vikings

1.  expanded settlements from Scandinavia to Iceland, Greenland, Britain, and Ireland

2.  Leif Erikson reached the North American continent, and called it Vinland, which later became Newfoundland

D.  Phoenicians

1.  first known to have developed the art of navigation

2.  first recorded circumnavigation of Africa in 590 BC

E.  Age of Discovery (1492-1522)

1.  Christopher Columbus sailed to the West Indies, thinking he had arrived in Asia

2.  Balboa was the first European to reach the Pacific Ocean

3.  Victoria: Spanish ship; first to circumnavigate the world; partially led by Magellan and partially by del Cano; halfway through the voyage, Magellan was killed in the Philippines by natives

a.  Magellan gave the Pacific Ocean its name because it initially appeared calm and peaceful (paci=peace)

b.  Magellan was Portuguese, but he sailed for Spain

F.  Atlantic Ocean was named after Atlas, the Greek mythical Titan who held up the heavens

G.  Captain James Cook (1700s): English explorer who went on multiple voyages in the Pacific Ocean to map islands; his ships were the Adventure, Endeavour, and Resolution; he prevented scurvy in his crew by feeding them sauerkraut, which is high in vitamin C; he was killed in Hawaii by natives

H.  Benjamin Franklin/Timothy Folger (1700s): Folger, Franklin’s nephew, gave Franklin sailing data because he was a sea captain; Franklin drew a chart of the Gulf Stream and printed and distributed it

I.  Matthew Fontaine Maury [Father of Oceanography] (1800s): established standardized methods of nautical and meteorological observations at sea and improved trade routes

J.  Charles Darwin (1800s): wrote a book about the change in form of coral reefs; sailed on the HMS Beagle; Darwin did much of his evolution research on finches in the Galapagos Islands

K.  Robert Fulton developed the first steamboats in the early 1800s

II.  HMS Challenger (1872-76): marked the beginning of modern oceanography

A.  first large expedition with the sole purpose of studying oceanography

B.  ship was converted to a research ship from a British corvette, a type of warship

C.  English-funded; led by scientist Charles Wyville Thompson; John Murray was assistant naturalist and helped publish the results; Henry N. Moseley drew pictures of many organisms on the expedition

D.  Challenger space shuttle was named after this ship

E.  Challenger Deep, of the Mariana Trench, was named after the HMS Challenger

III.  Famous Oceanographers

A.  Edward Forbes (1843): influential biologist that incorrectly asserted that life could not exist below 550 m due to high pressures and low light, which was the azoic hypothesis; this theory was proved wrong by the HMS Challenger expedition and other earlier data that existed at the time that Forbes published the hypothesis

B.  Ernst Haeckel: German biologist who described many species discovered on the Challenger expedition

C.  Victor Hensen (1800s): pioneer in plankton studies

D.  Fridjtof Nansen (late 1800s): drifted the Fram through ice in the Arctic

E.  V. Walfrid Ekman (1900s): Scandinavian pioneer in physical oceanography

F.  Alexander Agassiz (1800s): rich, Swiss-born American naturalist who studied coral formation; many of his voyages were on the Albatross; donated lots of his money to biological oceanographic research; designed sampling devices

G.  Joseph Hooker (1847): found that diatoms are photosynthetic

IV.  Major Marine Institutions

A.  Scripps Institution of Oceanography (1903, California)

B.  Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (1930, Massachusetts)

C.  Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory (1949, New York)

V.  Recent History (1900s)

A.  Meteor (1920s): German ship that studied currents in the South Atlantic Ocean; first ship to use echo sounders for scientific purposes

B.  Robert Peary: first man to deliberately reach North Pole in 1909

C.  Roald Amundsen: Norwegian who was the first man to get to South Pole in 1911 on the Fram, Nansen’s ship

D.  FAMOUS [French-American Mid-Ocean Undersea Study] (1974): explored axis of Mid-Atlantic Ridge

E.  Deep Sea Drilling Project, Ocean Drilling Program, Integrated Ocean Drilling Program

1.  Glomar Challenger: confirmed seafloor spreading; part of the DSDP

2.  JOIDES Resolution: successor to the Glomar Challenger; part of the ODP

3.  Chikyu [“Planet Earth”]: Japanese ship that is the most advanced drilling ship at this time; part of the IODP; can drill 7 km into the crust

F. 
Trieste (record depth: 11000 m, 36000 ft): submarine/bathyscaphe to make the deepest dive ever; traveled to Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench; designed by Swiss Auguste Piccard

G.  In 2002, cores were drilled that show that life exists deep within the sea floor

H.  Underwater habitats

1.  Conshelf [continental shelf station]: Jacques-Yves Cousteau made several different underwater living habitats

2.  Sealab: early underwater station developed by the US Navy. Scott Carpenter was the commander. The environment was filled with helium (and other gases), so his voice sounded odd when he spoke to president Lyndon B. Johnson on the phone. Duffy the dolphin was trained to help out with the experiment.

3.  Aquarius: currently the only existent underwater habitat. It is off the coast of Key Largo, Florida 50 feet under the surface.