Preface 



. . . The moisture and varying temperature of the land depends 

 largely upon fiie positions of the currents in the ocean, and it 

 is thought that when we know the Jaws of the Jotter we wiJJ, 

 with the aid of meteoroJogy, be able to say to the farmers 

 hundreds of miles distant from the sea. 'you will have an 

 abnormal amount of rain during next summer,' or 'the winter 

 wiJJ be cold and clear,' and by these predictions they can 

 plant a crop to suit the circumstances or provide an unusuaJ 

 amount of food for their stock. . . . From a study of these great 

 forces, then, we derive our greatest benefits, and any amount 

 of well-directed effort to gain a complete mastery of their 

 laws will revert directly to the good of the human race. 



Lt. John E. Pillsbury, 1891 

 from The Gulf Stream 



In many respects the history of the evolu- 

 tion of the nature and extent of oceanographic 

 research correlates with the diversity and in- 

 tensity of man's use of the sea and its re- 

 sources. As early as 500 B.C. the Phoenicians 

 and other ancient mariners plying the Medi- 

 terranean Sea for commerce and conquest, 

 brought forth an early form of oceanographic 

 report, noting not only coastal landmarks and 

 topography, but distances in sailing times, pre- 

 vailing winds, critical depths, severe currents 

 and, occasionally, bottom conditions. The ris- 

 ing volume of North Atlantic traffic in the last 

 half of the 18th Century inspired and enabled 

 whaler Timothy Folger and statesman Benja- 

 min Franklin each to delineate the Gulf 

 Stream, including seawater temperature tables 

 designed to tell sailing captains if they were 

 in or out of the Stream. The rise of the Ameri- 

 can Navy and the extension of regular clipper 

 ship schedules to all parts of the world caused 

 Matthew Fontaine Maury in 1855 to publish 

 his "Physical Geography of the Sea" which 

 described ocean winds and currents over 

 major trade routes. To this point in history, 

 however, with the exception of Charles Dar- 

 win's cruise aboard H.M.S. Beagle, ocean ex- 

 peditions for pure research were small in 

 number, infrequent and often poorly funded. 



Two developments leading to a whole new 

 use of the sea and lending practical impor- 

 tance to the ocean's third dimension were 

 Samuel F. B. Morse's invention in the 1830's 

 of the telegraph and the discovery of gutta- 



percha in the 1840's as a reliable coating for 

 undersea cables. Suddenly there was a real 

 need to know the ocean's great depths and 

 contours. This need to look beneath the waves 

 intensified man's curiosity about other deep 

 sea phenomena as well. Was there, for ex- 

 ample, life in the great depths, or was there 

 a depth limit, an azoic zone in which no life 

 could exist? What were the temperatures of 

 the depths? . . . the currents, if any? 



An almost direct cause-and-effect sequence 

 of events can be established leading from the 

 development of undersea telegraphy to the 

 sailing of H.M.S. ChaJJenger on its world- 

 famous three-and-a-half year voyage of dis- 

 covery in 1872 and the countless expeditions 

 that ensued through the balance of the 19th 

 and the early part of the 20th Century. 



In the period that followed, the military 

 submarine came into being, raising a host of 

 new and different questions about the ocean. 

 World fisheries expanded from a largely 

 coastal, unmechanized, limited-catch activity 

 to its present state where great industrial fish- 

 ing expeditions roam the world catching with 

 such intensity that whole stocks are threat- 

 ened with extinction, and conflicts over access 

 occur among nations. The industrial and eco- 

 nomic activities of man ashore have increased 

 to a point where wastes released to the ocean, 

 once minor and incidental, now have the po- 

 tential for major impact with, again, conflicts. 

 The rapid draw-down of mineral and fuel re- 



