Introduction 



Oceanography is the branch of science concerned with the oceans and the phenomena 

 occurring therein. It is a part of the sciences dealing with the Earth, and in so far as it 

 gives a quaUtative description of phenomena it belongs to the geographical sciences. 

 It uses methods essentially similar to those of the other geographical sciences and its 

 aim is the same as that of general geography, the classification of the different material 

 and energy characteristics of the phenomena found with precise definitions into differ- 

 ent categories and the systematic inter-relation of these. Regional geography groups 

 all locally co-existing and interacting phenomena on the basis of a common area of 

 occurrence which may be of greater or lesser extent. From the geographical point of 

 view there is thus a general and a regional oceanography both using principally statisti- 

 cal and descriptive methods. 



The rapid progress of the exact sciences in recent times has led to an increasingly 

 rapid transition from a geographic to a geophysical treatment of the problems of 

 oceanography. This has given rise to a quantitative conception of oceanographic 

 phenomena based on physical-mathematical principles. In this respect oceanography 

 is a branch o^ geophysics and is recognized as an independent science comparable with 

 meteorology (the physics of the atmosphere) and with geophysics in its more restricted 

 sense (the physics of the Earth). 



The history of the development of oceanography into a science is essentially the same 

 as that of other scientific disciplines, although it is still at a comparatively early stage. 

 Like all the other sciences its facts are obtained by observation. Initially these observa- 

 tions were made only of phenomena and conditions in the immediate neighbourhood 

 of continental coasts or islands. Conditions in the open sea were for long indefinite 

 and uncertain, and furthermore things that were new, exceptional or spectacular, were 

 much more interesting than normal everyday phenomena. As knowledge increased 

 men ceased to be content to recognise conditions and changes immediately around 

 them; they also sought after insight into the nature of phenomena occurring all over 

 the Earth. Men penetrated out into the vast stretches of the seas and there gradually 

 developed a conception of the ocean. The bold voyages of seamen gradually clarified 

 ideas of the figure of the Earth and the confirmation of its spherical shape showed the 

 finiteness of the oceans. 



Systematic order in the collection of ships' observations and the increased accuracy 

 obtainable by the use of instruments came only after the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century. The regular navigation of the seas necessary for the expansion of trade and 

 commerce rapidly increased the knowledge of surface conditions which was recorded 

 in thousands of ships' journals of merchant marine ships. At the suggestion of the 

 American naval officer and oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-73) an 

 agreement was reached in 1853 at an international conference in Brussels on the form 

 and content of these journals, and this was supplemented by an international conference 



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