] 
The Use of Oceanography 
By G. E. R. Deacon 
Director, U.K. National Institute of Oceanography 
Surrey, England 
[With 2 plates] 
Tue prirector of the world’s largest marine laboratory recently gave 
a vivid picture of the disadvantages under which marine scientists 
have to work. First, he pointed out, there is the great disparity be- 
tween the size of the area to be studied and the number of scientists 
actually engaged on the study. Although the ocean covers an area 
well over twice that covered by land surfaces, the number of ocean- 
ographers is infinitesimal in comparison with the numbers of scientists 
engaged in the study of the land. 
Then there is the baffling opacity of the ocean which defies attempts 
to penetrate it except by such means as lowering measuring and 
sampling apparatus on long wires or by sending down into the depths 
of the ocean a few intrepid scientists in one of the only two safe 
bathyscaphes now in existence. But the performance of such measur- 
ing and sampling apparatus can only be assessed indirectly, and the 
observers in the bathyscaphe cannot see anything that is more than 
a few feet away. Acoustic methods, which send sound waves into the 
sea and seek to distinguish between different kinds of echoes, show in- 
creasing promise, but they are a poor substitute for our eyes, and for 
the telescopes and aerial photography which can be used on land. 
Another limitation arises from the fact that waves, currents, water 
movements, and sea conditions vary widely and as yet unpredictably 
with time and place, and can only be studied at the relatively few times 
and places accessible to research ships. Lastly, there is the disadvan- 
tage common to all large-scale problems in nature that little use can be 
made of controlled experiments—the forces involved are too large, and 
the time and space scales too great to be simulated in the laboratory. 
A well-known marine scientist has aptly summed up the position by 
asking how meteorologists would get on if they had to cover the whole 
1 Reprinted by permission from Impact of Science on Society, vol. 9, No. 2, published 
in 1958 by UNESCO. 
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