The Future of Oceanography^ 



By Athelstan Spilhaus 



Dean of the Institute of Technology 

 University of Minnesota 



[With 4 plates] 



Oceanography's future depends on the uses to which we put the 

 ocean. The science of oceanography is not a discipline but an adven- 

 ture wherein any discipline or combination of disciplines may be 

 focused on understanding and using the sea and all that is in it. Often 

 the arts of using the sea precede the full understanding of it and point 

 to questions yet unanswered. For example, submarines led to the 

 study of how sound travels in the ocean ; aircraft carriers to the study 

 of waves. But equally, scientific discoveries resulting from sheer 

 curiosity point the way to new uses. The finding (first by the Chal- 

 lenger) of manganese nodules on the bottom of the sea, followed by 

 recent photographs showing their abundance, has led to serious work 

 on "surface" mining the sea bottom. In all science there is a continu- 

 ous interplay between artisan and scientist; in oceanography, it is 

 between sailor, submariner, fisherman, and oceanographer. 



So, to speculate about oceanography's future, we must extend pres- 

 ent uses into the future, dream of entirely new uses, and see what we 

 can do to bring them about. 



One of the first and still one of the foremost uses man makes of the 

 ocean is as a magnificent highway with "straight," great circle routes 

 to travel from any point on the coast of the world island to any other 

 point on its coast. Surface navigation has been highly developed 

 with excellent "road signs" from the simplest buoy or lighthouse 

 through radio time signals, sonar, long-range radar, and radio direc- 

 tion-finding navigational aids, to the most modern systems of naviga- 

 tion utilizing the navigational satellite as a "lighthouse in the sky." 

 Here, as in all cases, the needs for pure, scientific oceanography, for 

 industrial exploitation, and for the Navy are parallel. It is no use 

 for the oceanographer to know in detail the character of a certain body 



1 Reprinted by permission from Ocean Sciences, edited by E. John Long. Copyright 

 1964 by U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Md. 



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766-746 — 65 ^26 



