viii PREFACE 



effect. A brief history of the Scripps Institution is given in the catalogue of oceanographic 

 institutions. 



Although the development of the Bingham Oceanographic Foundation at Yale was 

 independent of the activities of the National Academy Committee on Oceanography, 

 it should be mentioned in this connection because of the extensive cooperation between 

 it and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The Atlantis of the Woods Hole 

 Institution has served as the research vessel for both the Woods Hole Institution and the 

 Bingham Oceanographic Foundation. A succinct account of the Bingham Oceanographic 

 Foundation is included in the catalogue of oceanographic institutions. 



In the hope that the United States Navy might find it feasible to extend its activities 

 in oceanographic investigations, the members of the National Academy Committee on 

 Oceanography called on the Secretary of the Navy, at that time the Honorable Charles 

 Francis Adams. The conference led to the appointment of a Naval Committee on Ocean- 

 ography under the chairmanship of Rear Admiral Frank H. Schofield, now retired. This 

 Committee made several recommendations, one of which was that Naval vessels equipped 

 with sonic-sounding apparatus should, when feasible, follow routes which would carry 

 them over oceanic areas for which information on oceanic depths was inadequate. This 

 recommendation was adopted and it has led to probably the most extensive systematic 

 program of sounding for bottom configuration undertaken by any country. Since about 

 1928 most of the north Pacific north of a line from the California coast to the Hawaiian 

 Islands and thence to the Philippines has been covered by a series of closely spaced lines 

 from east to west and these lines have been crossed by other lines, north to south between 

 the Aleutian and the Hawaiian Islands and toward the northeast from the Hawaiian 

 Islands to Puget Sound. United States Naval vessels have also run many other lines of 

 soundings. In addition to the soundings, the Navy Department has endeavored to 

 assist investigations in many other fields, so that it has now become one of the world's 

 major agencies in oceanographic research. Serial sections for subsurface temperatures 

 and salinities, the plotting of sea surface temperatures and surface drift, and the utiliza- 

 tion of submarines for the determination of gravity at sea are noteworthy. 



The Committee also took up oceanographic investigations with the United States 

 Coast and Geodetic Survey and the United States Coast Guard. Information on these 

 and other governmental institutions will be found in the catalogue of oceanographic 

 institutions to which reference has already been made. 



Notwithstanding the activities above enumerated, it seemed to the members of the 

 Committee that the purpose of the original resolution of the Committee "to consider the 

 share of the United States of America in a world wide program of oceanographic research," 

 had not been completely covered. Oceanography is necessarily a subject of world wide 

 extent. The oceans form about seventy per cent of the surface of the earth and their 

 margins are touched by most of the countries of the world. Rising from the ocean floors 

 there are multitudes of islands, some of them large, tens or even hundreds of thousands of 

 square miles in area, and they are under the jurisdiction of many nations. It is obvious 

 that any comprehensive systematic investigation of the oceans must be in large measure 

 an international enterprise. Recognizing these facts the Committee decided to attempt 

 the preparation of a digest of the oceanographic data available for the different ocean 

 basins and to compile a catalogue of the various institutions in the world engaged in anv 

 kind of oceanographic work. 



