History of Marine Science

1
History of Marine Science

• Unit 2

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Voyaging

• Travelling for a specific purpose
• First navigation was by celestial navigation-
  finding ones position in reference to heavenly
  bodies.
• First Voyages
• 4000 BC Egyptians organize commerce on Nile
• 800 BC first cartographers make ocean charts

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Library at Alexandria in Egypt

• First university
• Housed scrolls copied by law off ships that
  harbored.
• Eratosthenes
• 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
• Last librarian
• First woman recognized as mathematician,
  philosopher, and scientist
• Murdered
• library burned because of religious opposition to
  knowledge-Incalculable loss

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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

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ROV
bathysphere
submersible
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Fixed platform
Drilling ship
Floating platform
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Other Research Instruments

• Airplanes
• Satellites
• SEASAT 1st satellite dedicated to ocean
  studies
• Echo-sounding
• Underwater cameras
• Side scan sonar
• great for sunken ships

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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-22
787
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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
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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
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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.

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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/
A-lateen-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
• using the North Star to determine latitude

Exhumed Viking ship Viking Ship Museum, Oslo,
Norway.
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Science Voyaging 15th Century

• Chinese
• Sailed to influence and impress their neighbors.
• 1492 Columbus
• Sailing for Spain, sailed the Atlantic and
  discovered the Americas.
• 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.

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Science Voyaging16th Century

• 1519 - Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan
• 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.

http//www.solarnavigator.net/history/explorers_hi
story/ferdinand_magellan_charcoal_fur_robe.jpg
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Science Voyaging 18th Century

• John Harrison in 1728 developed the first
  chronometer.
• 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).

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Science Voyaging 18th Century

• 1762 American Ben Franklin
• created a chart of the Gulf Stream.
• The Gulf Stream gives the US its warm climate,
  bringing warm water north from the equator.

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Science Voyaging 18th Century

• 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)

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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
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Science Voyaging 19th Century

• 1838 US began the US Exploring Expedition with
  the unpopular Lt. Charles Wilkes
• 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
• 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

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Science Voyaging19th Century

• 1872-1876 Charles Wyville Thomson and John Murray
  (who coined the term oceanography)
• 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.
• Expedition is also still ongoing today and is
  considered the first only for science
  expedition
• this is the voyage that discovered the worlds
  deepest ocean trench, the Marianas Trench, now
  sometimes called the Challenger Deep.

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Science Voyaging19th 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
• 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

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Science Voyaging20th 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.

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Science Voyaging20th 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

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Science Voyaging20th Century

•  1960 Jacque Piccard and Don Walsch in the US
  Trieste bathyscaphe (small submarine)
• descend 35,801 ft. into the deepest part of the
  ocean within the Marianas trench
• NO ONE HAS BEEN BACK SINCE!

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• ".... 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

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Science Voyaging20th Century

•  1962 Alvin
• 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.

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• Black Smokers" are named for the soot-like
  appearance of the ejected material billowing out
  of the "chimneys".
• Super-heated water from the Earths 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.

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Science Voyaging20th Century

•  1968 Glomar Challenger
• confirmed evidence of seafloor spreading and
  plate tectonics from core drilling samples.

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Science Voyaging20th 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).

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Science Voyaging21st Century

• In 2006, a Chinese mineral company (COMRA)
  designed a craft to reach 23,000 ft

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Conclusion

• The ocean represents the Earths 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.