History of Marine Science Unit 2

Voyaging Traveling for a specific purpose First navigation was by celestial navigation- finding one’s position in reference to heavenly bodies. First Voyages – 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 – 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

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.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Science Voyaging: 15 th and 16 th Centuries 1492 Columbus – Sailing for Spain, sailed the Atlantic and “discovered” the America’s Vasco da 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 Artic.

Science Voyaging 16 th Century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan – the 1 st 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 ellan_charcoal_fur_robe.jpg

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 18 th 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. – Earth rotates 15° / hr (3 hours would be a 45° ). – Latitude can be known by stars (angle between your eyes, horizon and north star).

1831 Charles Darwin – HMS Beagle Explored Galopagos Islands led to the origin of species and the modern theories of evolution. Science Voyaging 19 th Century

1840 Matthew Maury of US Navy – Father of Oceanography – used sounding with a weighted line to discover the MidAtlantic 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 19 th Century

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 voyage that discovered the world’s deepest ocean trench, the Marianas Trench, now sometimes called the Challenger Deep.

Science Voyaging 19 th Century 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 Fridtj of 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

Research Vessels Submersibles – small underwater vehicles with moveable arms, lights and windows for scientific research. Can accommodate on-board researchers ROV – remotely operated vehicle, used for underwater data collection, but no on-board researchers Bathysphere –lowered by a cable from a ship, cables posed dangers(potential snapping). Replaced by bathyscaphe Drilling ships– take sediment cores Floating and Fixed platforms (FLIP – floating instrument platform) -gather data like temperature, salinity, density, and weather patterns

bathysphere ROV submersible

Drilling ship Fixed platform Floating platform

Other Research Instruments Airplanes Satellites – SEASAT: 1 st satellite dedicated to ocean studies Echosounding Underwater cameras Side scan sonar – great for sunken ships

Science Voyaging 20 th Century 1914 British explorer Sir Ernest Shackelton aboard the Endurance – pursues a dream of crossing Antarctica on foot by way of the South Pole German Meteor Expedition – the first to use echo sounding (depth and contour) to discover that the ocean was rugged, not flat as thought Jacque Cousteau and Emil Gagnan – invent the “aqualung”

Science Voyaging 20 th 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!

".... 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 20 th Century 1962 Alvin – Designed by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute – 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 20 th Century 1968 Glomar Challenger – confirmed evidence of seafloor spreading and plate tectonics from core drilling samples.

Science Voyaging 20 th Century 1985 JASON (a satellite) – found and documented the wreck of the Titanic Japan launched the Shinkai can carry a crew without a tether (rope) up to 21,414 ft deep into the ocean (a world record).

Science Voyaging 21 st 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.