1. Science and Marine Biology
Chapter 1

2. Importance of the oceans and Marine Organisms
Oceans are the principal physical feature of our planet. They cover nearly 71% of the earth’s surface. Oceans act as enormous solar powered engines that drive the various weather patterns affecting terrestrial environments such as El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

3. Ocean Productivity
The amount of food marine organisms can produce and the number of organisms the ocean can support.
The United Nations reports that more than 80 million metric tons of marine fish are harvested annually.
Main source of food, materials for industry and medicine, and provides jobs.

4. Study Of The Sea And Its Inhabitants
Oceanography: The study of the oceans and their phenomena, such as waves currents, and tides.
Different disciplines: Chemistry, physics, geology, geography, meteorology, and biology.
Marine Biology: The study of the living organisms that inhabit the seas and their interactions with each other.

5. Diversity in the World’s Ocean

6. Human Impact
Dumping trash, disposal of radioactive and industrial wastes, oil spills, and over fishing.
Make intelligent decisions you need to have background facts.

7. A History of Changing Perspectives
Early study of the sea’s creatures can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and Romans.
Aristotle and the “ladder of life” classified more than 500 species and studied fish gills, gas exchange and the anatomy of the cuttlefish.

8. History
Pliny the Elder: 37 volume Natural History which contains info. About terrestrial animals and references to marine fishes and bivalves.
Catholic Church
Arabian philosophers interpreted and explained the works of the ancient naturalists.
Late 18th century biologists would again conduct studies of the marine environment based on original observations.

9. Renewed Interest
The Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth centuries. Great discoveries.
Better sailing ships and navigational instruments.
Better sea routes
Lamarck and Cuvier studied and described marine organisms.

10. 1831 HMS Beagle 5 year voyage of exploration around the globe.
Charles Darwin observed first hand marine life and collect many specimens.
He proposed the explanation of atoll development.
He began his theory of Evolution
In 1859 is published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
After the Beagle he did a detailed study of the barnacles that inhabit the rocky coasts of England and produced a monograph on the subject still used today.

11. Challenger Expedition
3 ½ years HMS Challenger: contained state of the art equipment and research facilities.
It returned to England in 1876 and filled 50 volumes of scientific reports of information.
More than 4,700 new species were collected and described.
It gave birth to the modern sciences of marine biology and oceanography.

12. The Nineteenth Century
He also studied the barnacles that inhabit the rocky coasts of England.
General agreement that living organisms could not survive in the cold and darkness of the deep.
But transatlantic telegraph cable provided evidence of all sorts of marine organisms which sparked investigations and dredging expeditions.

13. Charles Wyville Thomson
Driving force behind the Challenger and chief scientist
Collected floating microscopic organisms
Victor Hensen called it Plankton
They are the base of the oceans complex food webs.

14. Marine Studies in the U.S.
Alexander Agassiz an American naturalist 1877
Investigates the organisms of the sea and collected samples of dredged animals from depths of 600 to 14,000 feet.
He studied coloration in marine animals as different depths.
He found brightly colored animals in surface waters that became blues, greens and reds with black as the depth increased.

15. More Agassiz
He spent much of the latter part of his life studying the structure and formation of coral reefs.
His father Louis Agassiz founded the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard Univ. and the first marine bio. Lab in the U.S. Anderson Summer School of Natural History
This was for teachers to improve their methods of teaching natural history.

16. Other U.S. Marine Labs
Twentieth Century: Scripps Institution of Oceanography in Ca.
The University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in Fl., the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Fla., the Friday Harbor lab of the Univ. of Washington, and Duke Univ. Marine Lab in North Carolina.

17. Marine Bio in the 20th Century
Expeditions were mounted to study the Artic and Antarctic seas.
Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen and Englishman Sir Alistair Hardy
Nansen: Magnetic North Pole, Charting the waters
Hardy: biolody of whales for commercial exploitation and more info. On the Antarctic seas.

18. Marine Bio Today
Deep submersibles such as the Alvin can view and collect organisms that live in the deepest recesses of the sea.
Computers with Internet…the information superhighway, enormous amounts of information.