1. History of Oceanography 3

2. The Beginning of Ocean Science

3. 18th Century
Previous exploration driven by military, trade, or conquest objectives.
Royal Navy of Britain launched voyages with objectives of exploration, mapping and projecting British presence around the world.

4. Cook’s Expedition (1768 – 1779)
Made 1st accurate maps of many regions in the ocean w/ new invention.
Chronometer invented by John Harrison.
Chronometer is a time piece capable of keeping accurate time aboard ship at sea.

5. Ben Franklin and the Gulf Stream (1777)
Noted northerly routed ship from Europe took longer than ships that came by a longer more southerly route.
Learned about gulf stream from nephew, who gave his uncle a chart.
Franklin had the chart printed and distributed to the captains of mail ships.
They shortened their inbound voyages by avoiding the current and they shortened their outbound voyages by using the current.

6. Father of Oceanography… Matthew Maury (1806 – 1873)
Matthew Maury, in charge of the Depot of Naval charts and instruments.
Organized first international meteorological conference to establish uniform methods.
Published a summarized version of data in first Oceanographic textbook in 1855.

7. Darwin, Coral Reefs and Biological Evolution
From 1831 to 1836 a naturalist for the HMS Beagle circumnavigated the southern oceans and oceanic islands.
Darwin observed birds and other organisms on isolated islands, most of his research took place in the Galapagos Islands.
In 1859, his observations were published in the book “On the origin of Species”.

8. The Rosses, Edward Forbes, and life in the deep sea
John Ross took samples and animals in Baffin bay (Canada) Later James Ross took samples from Antarctic ocean bottom at 4.3 Miles
John Ross and James Ross found that there are some bottom dwelling creatures in Baffin Bay and Antarctic Ocean. They discovered that the deep Atlantic is uniformly cold.
Forbes – Oceans divided into life-depth zones; concluded that ocean life decrease as depth increases. This contrasted with Rosses finings and created dispute for decades in Britain.

9. The Ocean as Laboratory : The Challenger Expedition (1872-1876)
The expedition covered 79,178 miles and was the first voyage undertaken for the study of the world’s oceans.
Directed by C. Wyville Thompson
2 contributions:
Discovery and classification of 4,717 new marine species
Measurement of record water depth at the Mariana Trench of 26,847 feet.

10. Alexander Agassiz ( )
multimillionaire benefactor to oceanography, especially in the U.S.
1st to use steel cables for deep sea dredging.

11. Victor Henson and Marine Ecology
Victor Henson solved the problem about population fluctuations in commercial fish.
Coined the term plankton.
He found that cold water is more nutrient rich, leading to more plankton, and a larger fish population.

12. Polar oceanography begins with the voyage of the Fram
Fridtjof Nansen set out with a crew of 13 on a boat called Fram to explore the Artic sea.
The Fram had a hull that was designed to withstand the tremendous pressure of the arctic ice.
His boat became frozen in ice and drifted for 3 years and 1,000 miles.
His drift proved that there was no continent in the Artic sea.