History of Marine
Science
Unit 2
Voyaging
 Travelling for a specific purpose
 First navigation was by celestial navigation-
finding one’s position in reference to heavenly
bodies.
 First Voyages
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4000 BC Egyptians organize commerce on
Nile
800 BC first cartographers make ocean charts
Library at Alexandria in Egypt
 First university
 Housed scrolls copied by law off ships that harbored.
 Eratosthenes
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Librarian whom calculated circumference of Earth.
Realized if the sun was directly over one place (shining straight down),
and over another place (shining at an angle) then the Earth must be
curved
Estimated Earth size within 8% of true value.
Developed longitude and latitude
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present day longitude and latitude was developed by Hipparchus in 120 BC
 Hypatia
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Last librarian
First woman recognized as mathematician, philosopher, and scientist
Murdered
library burned because of religious opposition to knowledgeIncalculable loss
Research Vessels
 Submersibles
– small underwater vehicles
 ROV
– remotely operated vehicle
 Bathysphere
–lowered by a cable from a ship
 Drilling ships
– take sediment cores
 Floating and Fixed platforms (FLIP –
floating instrument platform)
-gather data like temperature, salinity,
density, and weather patterns
ROV
bathysphere
submersible
Fixed platform
Drilling ship
Floating platform
Other Research Instruments
 Airplanes
 Satellites
– SEASAT: 1st satellite dedicated to ocean studies
 Echo-sounding
 Underwater cameras
 Side scan sonar
– great for sunken ships
Early Man
 Marine life was a main food source for
cultures living near the shore.
 The remains of many of the marine
organisms that were eaten are found in
their kitchen middens (trash)
 show us not only what they ate but also
gives us an idea of the species and their
abundance during that particular period
of time.
Native American kitchen midden (Morro Bay,
California) showing shells of seafood consumed by
early cultures.
The Egyptians
 The Egyptians established sea trade throughout the Indian
Ocean as early as 2300 B.C.
 ca 1938 - 1756 B.C.
built the canal, the
Isthmus of Suez, to
navigate ships across
land.
 It operated until 775
A.D.
http://search.eb.com.ezproxy.uhd.edu/eb/article-22787
The Phoenicians
 Phoenicians: (from the Middle East)
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Sailed around Africa in 590 B.C.
A stone carving from the 1st century AD shows the kind
of ship that the Phoenicians used on the Mediterranean
Sea
They went outside the Mediterranean to the Atlantic
Ocean with their knowledge of tides, currents and
seasonal changes.
The Greeks
 Greeks
 Herodotus published accurate map of Mediterranean region, ca
450 B.C.
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Alexander the Great, 336 B.C. Developed trade routes
throughout the Mediterranean and expanded their empire under
Alexander the Great
http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/Ancientimages/109.JPEG
The Greeks
 200 B.C. Eratosthenes
mathematically calculated the circumference of the Earth
to be 40,000 km.
 It actually is 40,032 km.
 2,200 years ago his math was good enough to be off only 32
km!
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•Eratosthenes knew that at noon on the summer solstice
the Sun is directly overhead at Syene (a city)
•He also knew the distance between Syene and Alexandria
(another city)
•combined with his measurement of the solar angle a
between the Sun and the vertical, he was able to calculate
Earth's circumference.
From Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Romans
Studied and noted the phenomenon
of erosion. Researched and
documented the water cycle.
Fall of the Roman Empire
Were extremely superstitious
and had a fear of intellectual
inquiry. Europe lost most of its
detailed understanding of
geography.
The Arabs
 ca 200 B.C Islamic and Arab Merchants
Experienced sailors
 traded throughout the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans.
 They are believed to have invented the lateen sail
 triangular sail important in early navigation.
http://search.eb.com.ezproxy.uhd.edu/eb/art-12539/Alateen-rigged-ship-used-by-Arab-merchants
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Science Voyaging:
Middle Ages
 900 A.D. The Vikings crossed the North Atlantic to colonize
Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland
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using the North Star to determine latitude
Leif Erickson – Discovered North America 500 years before
Columbus
Exhumed Viking ship; Viking Ship Museum, Oslo, Norway.
•The Polynesians, 300 - 1500 A.D., used natural
phenomena (winds patterns, currents, tides, stars,
native animals …)to migrate around the South
Pacific in boats.
•colonized islands west of Samoa, New Zealand,
Easter Island, and Hawaii
The 'Age of Discovery'
• Between the mid 1400s and early 1900s was the time
when humans explored Earth creating maps and
charts and bringing back specimens
• A time of development of ocean-going ships and
better navigation equipment
• Most of this exploration came out of Spain, Portugal,
France, Scandinavia, Italy, & Germany.
Science Voyaging:
15th Century
 Chinese
Sailed to influence and impress their neighbors.
 1492 Columbus
 Sailed for Spain, sailed the Atlantic and “discovered” the
Americas.
 1497 Vasco de Gama
 Sailed for Portugal, sailed around Africa from Portugal to India
to establish trade routes.
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 1513 Balboa
Settled the first European Colony in Panama. He crossed the
Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean in 1513. He became
the first European to lead an expedition known to have seen
or reached the Pacific from the New World.
 Europeans searched for the Northwest passage through northern
Canada to trade with Asia; explored the Arctic.
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Columbus: Hero or ?
“Gold is most excellent; gold constitutes treasure; and he who has it does all
he wants in the world, and can even lift souls up to Paradise.”
– Christopher Columbus, 1503 letter to the king and queen of Spain.
Science Voyaging
16th Century
 1519 - Portuguese explorer
Ferdinand Magellan
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http://www.solarnavigator.net/history/explorers_history/ferdinand_mag
ellan_charcoal_fur_robe.jpg
the 1st European expedition
to circumnavigate the world.
237 men began the voyage;
18 returned.
Magellan actually died
before the journey was
finished, but his crew
returned in 1522.
Magellan
The “sea” becomes a new place for empires to interact. It was the Era of
trade with, and plunder of, the Aztecs and Incas for their gold and silver by
the Spanish. The English and the Dutch pirates attack the Spanish fleets.
Age of Exploration 1480-1610
Science Voyaging
18th Century
 John Harrison in 1728 developed the first chronometer.
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This was a timepiece governed by a spring instead of a
pendulum
allowed longitude to be known
4 are still located in Greenwich, England, which is the 0
meridian.
If your noon is before Greenwich noon then you are to
the east, if your noon is after Greenwich then you are
to the west.
Latitude can be known by stars (angle between your
eyes, horizon and north star).
Science Voyaging
18th Century
 1762 American Ben
Franklin
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created a chart of the
Gulf Stream.
The Gulf Stream gives
the US its warm
climate, bringing warm
water north from the
equator.
Ben Franklin’s Gulf Stream Map
Ben Franklin’s Map?
 Benjamin Franklin made his map because he
wanted to speed the mail across the Atlantic.
 He was the first Postmaster General in the
U.S.
“You may delay but time will not.”
Benjamin Franklin
Science Voyaging
18th Century
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1768 James Cook of the British Royal
Navy
First marine scientist
charted New Zealand, many islands,
and the Great Barrier Reef of Australia
sailing upon the HMS Endeavor
Recorded and successfully interpreted
natural history, anthropology, and
oceanography with accuracy and
thoroughness.
Insisted on cleanliness and made his
men eat limes to ward off scurvy
(Vitamin C deficiency)
Science Voyaging
19th Century
 1831 Charles Darwin
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HMS Beagle
Explored Galapagos
Islands
 led to the origin of
species and the
modern theories of
evolution.
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http://uk.gizmodo.com/charles_darwin_l.jpg
Science Voyaging
19th Century
 1838 US began the US Exploring
Expedition with the unpopular Lt. Charles
Wilkes
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Expedition was to gain knowledge and
disprove theory that Earth was hollow and
there were holes in the poles.
Information obtained made up 19 volumes of
maps, text, and illustrations.
 1840 Matthew Maury of US Navy
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Father of Oceanography
used sounding with a weighted line to
discover the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a hidden
range of underwater mountains
Made charts and sailing directions
1855 published the Physical Geography of
the Sea
Monument in Richmond, VA
Edward Forbes -1800’s
Predicted different types of plant and animal
life at different depths of the ocean.
Introduced the idea of dredging.
Science Voyaging
19th Century
 1872-1876 Charles Wyville Thomson and John Murray (who coined the
term oceanography)
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set out on famous HMS Challenger Expedition for British
Took samples and disproved theory that there were no
organisms below 1,800 feet due to pressure and lack of light.
Discovered 4,727 new species, tested water, made soundings,
151 trawls, currents, meteorology, sediments, and charted reefs.
The first pure oceanographic investigation that stimulated the
science of marine biology.
Complied a 50 volume set of information still used today
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gathered more data in its time than all other data to
date.
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Expedition is also still ongoing today and is considered the first
“only for science expedition”
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this is the voyage that discovered the world’s deepest
ocean trench, the Marianas Trench, now sometimes called
the Challenger Deep.
Challenger Expedition
The map below shows the
Route of HMS Challenger(in red);
the expedition lasted 1,000
days and covered more than
68,000 nautical miles
Challenger Expedition
England’s Royal Society obtained
the use of HMS Challenger to
study sea floor characteristics,
chemical composition of sea
water, and life at all levels.
Science Voyaging
19th Century
1895 Fridtjof Nansen
 studied the polar oceans aboard the Fram, a ship
built to withstand crushing ice
 confirmed the relationship between whales and
plankton- from a whaling stand point
 Proved polar ice flowed. Entered ice by Alaska,
exited by Greenland three years and over 1000
miles later. Determined that the North Pole is
landless.
Oceanography in the Twentieth
Century
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Support by wealthy individuals
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Rapid advances during World War II
Office of Naval Research (ONR) and National
Science Foundation (NSF) funding
International Geophysical Year (IGY)
cooperation
Satellites
Deep Sea Drilling Program
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA)
Science Voyaging
20th Century
 1898 John Holland invents
1st gas engine/battery
powered submarine
 bought by US
government in 1900.
 The world wars were the
catalyst for US
oceanographic research
 Development of technology
including electronic
equipment, deep sea drilling
programs, (1916) SONAR,
use of GPS (global
positioning system) and
satellites.
Science Voyaging
20th Century
 1914 British explorer Sir Ernest Shackelton
aboard the Endurance
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pursues a dream of crossing Antarctica on foot by
way of the South Pole.
 1925 German Meteor Expedition
 the first to use echo sounding (depth and contour) to
discover that the ocean was rugged, not flat as
thought.
 1943 Jacque Cousteau and Emil Gagnan
 invent the “aqualung”
Science Voyaging
20th Century
 1960 Jacque Piccard
and Don Walsch in the
US Trieste bathyscaphe
(small submarine)
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descend 35,801 ft. into
the deepest part of the
ocean within the
Marianas trench
NO ONE HAS BEEN
BACK SINCE!
".... I saw a wonderful thing. Lying on the bottom just
beneath us was some type of flatfish… Even as I saw
him, his two round eyes on top of his head spied us…”
“Why should he have eyes? Merely to see
phosphorescence?...Here, in an instant, was the
answer that biologists had asked for the decades.
Could life exist in the greatest depths of the ocean? It
could!”
- J. Picard
Science Voyaging
20th Century
 1962 Alvin
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Designed by Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institute
First deep sea
submersible to carry
passengers
has traveled around the
world completing 4,162
dives.
has mechanical arms and
in 1966 helped to locate a
H-bomb that was lost in
the Mediterranean Sea.
In 1979 discovered black
smokers on the sea floor.
 “Black Smokers" are named for the soot-like appearance of the
ejected material billowing out of the "chimneys".
 Super-heated water from the Earth’s crust with very high
concentrations of dissolved minerals.
 As the super-heated water meets the very cold ocean-bottom water,
the dissolved minerals precipitate out and settle onto the rock
around them.
 This causes the chimneys to grow in height over time.
Science Voyaging
20th Century
 1968 Glomar Challenger
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confirmed evidence of seafloor spreading and
plate tectonics from core drilling samples.
Science Voyaging
20th Century
 1985 JASON (a satellite)
 found and documented
the wreck of the Titanic.
 JJ attached to Alvin to
go inside the ship
 1989 - Japan launched
the Shinkai 6500
- can carry a crew without
a tether (rope) up to
21,414 ft deep into the
ocean (a world record).
JOIDES Resolution
(1985 to present)
Ocean Drilling Program drill ship
Offshore Drilling Platform
MBARI
Moss Landing
Scripps
San Diego
Jacques Cousteau
(1910-1997)
invented SCUBA during
World War II
Science Voyaging
21st Century
 In 2006, a Chinese mineral company
(COMRA) designed a craft to reach 23,000 ft
Conclusion
 The ocean represents the
Earth’s last frontier for
exploration and the key to
understanding the future of
our planet.
 The human race depends
on the life and
sustainability of the ocean
for economic, biological,
and environmental stability.
 The world of Aquatic
science is ever reaching
for new discoveries in this
blue realm.