NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM—1965 699 
II Oceanography 
Oceanography, the scientific study of the seas and of all that is in and 
beneath them, is comparatively recent as a formal branch of science. Although 
mankind has been interested in the sea since before the days of Aristotle, and 
Oceanographic ships have been exploring the seas now for ninety odd years, it. is 
only in the last twenty years that the study of the seas has become a daily way 
of life for so many scientists and that this endeavor has been supported on such 
a large scale by governments and universities. Whether or not this support is 
adequate for the problems that confront man in his hopes for understanding and 
utilizing the seas is a matter to be taken up later in this series. In any event, 
growth of interest in and activity in oceanography has been exponential in the 
past two decades. There are many reasons for this -- some of them related to the 
war, and the need at that time to understand waves and currents along strange 
tropical shores, some of them related to the increasing concern over the future 
of major oceanic fisheries and not least to the increasing popular interest in- 
spired by such inventions as the self contained diving apparatus, which some call 
aqua lung and others know by its unlovely acronym SCUBA --- short for self con- 
tained underwater breathing apparatus -- and the atomic submarines that may move 
about like fish, almost perpetually beneath the surface. 
Today, more people than ever seem to be interested in knowing something 
about the ocean and about the ways that it is being studied by scientists. Now 
and then we get the impression that some of these people think the oceanographer 
-- or oceanologist, as some would call him -- is a different and unique kind of 
scientist following a very special sort of science only slightly less mysterious 
than atomic physics. No one has ever defined oceanography in a way that satis- 
fies most oceanographers, because oceangraphy is really not a science in its own 
right, dealing with a limited suite of phenomena, but simply the scientific study 
of the ocean and its physical and biological contents. Specialists in many 
different disciplines are oceanographers -- mathematicians who derive equations 
for wave patterns or analyse tides, biologists who study the abundance and dis- 
tribution of plankton - the floating life of the sea - geologists who analyse the 
composition of the mud at the bottom, and the man who tows a sea going tape re- 
corder through a herd of whales to record their conversation. All these and 
many others are oceanographers, and some of them do not understand what the others 
are up to. But they all have one thing in common -- they go to sea for their 
data, 
We usually date the formal beginning of oceanography as Dec. 30 1872, when 
Her Majesty's Ship Challenger made her first station after leaving Portsmouth on 
a cruise that was to last more than three years and circumnavigate the globe.-. 1 
station, incidentally, is simply a spot at which observations are made -- in this 
case, at Lat )1°57'N, Long 9°2'W. ‘The depth was 1125 fathoms. Nothing very re- 
markable was discovered as the dredge did not work quite right and came up half 
empty - but with enough ice cold bottom mud nevertheless to chill a bottle of 
champagne to drink to the success of the expedition. 
What did we know about the oceans in 1872 that prompted such an expedition? 
It must not be forgotten that this was not an expedition to chart passages and 
shoals and rocks for commerce, although some of that work was done, nor was it 
an expedition to find new lands for the Crown, for there were no unknown lands 
left. Nor did anyone expect to find fold, spices or other such things. This was 
an expedition -- and the first such -- sent out to satisfy the curiosity of man. 
