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

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
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)

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
The Greeks
 Greeks
 Herodotus published accurate map of Mediterranean region, ca
450 B.C.

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!

•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.
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

Science Voyaging:
Middle Ages
 900 A.D. The Vikings crossed the North Atlantic to
colonize Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland

using the North Star to determine latitude
Exhumed Viking ship; Viking Ship Museum, Oslo, Norway.
Science Voyaging:
15th Century
 Chinese
Sailed to influence and impress their neighbors.
 1492 Columbus
 Sailing for Spain, sailed the Atlantic and “discovered” the
America’s.
 1497 Vasco de Gama
 Sailing for Portugal, sailed around Africa from Portugal to India
to establish trade routes.
 Europeans searched for the Northwest passage through northern
Canada to trade with Asia; explored the Arctic.

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.
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.
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

HMS Beagle
Explored Galapagos
Islands
 led to the origin of
species and the
modern theories of
evolution.

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
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

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”

this is the voyage that discovered the world’s deepest
ocean trench, the Marianas Trench, now sometimes called
the Challenger Deep.
Science Voyaging
19th Century
 The map below shows the
routeof HMS Challenger(in red);
the expedition lasted 1,000
days and covered more than
68,000 nautical miles.
 1895 Fridtjof Nansen
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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
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

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

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).
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.