history of marine biology

• Oceanography studies everything about ocean and its properties (living and nonliving), while Marine Biology specifically looks at its life forms and their relationships
• Marine organisms applications:

  • Economy and trade
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Food industry
  • Transportation
• Human impact on marine organisms

  • Pollution (sonar, oil spills, trash)
  • Poaching
  • Overfishing
  • Ocean acidification
• Ocean acidification mostly affects calcium carbonate organisms like corals, crabs, and sponges
• Early classical studies include:

  • aristotle
  • pliny the elder
  • seeds of basic science
• Aristotle discovered "Aristotle's Lantern" - insides of the sea urchin
• The information aristotle and pliny the elder mostly came from their expeditions in the atlantic and the mediterranean
• The 18th — 19th century naturalists include

  • Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, Georges Cuvier, Charles Darwin
  • Discovery of deep-sea organisms
• Georges Cuvier - Discovered "cuverian tubules" (structure in sea cucumber that secrete white stick substance to lure away predators)
• Charles Darwin – Became a naturalist/ gentleman's companion. He first studied and made a theory about how coral reefs developed over time
• Mid-1800s marked the discovery of deep-sea organisms
• The general consensus in the early 1800s was nothing can live in the deep ocean because of extreme conditions (pressure, temperature, light)
• They discovered sessile deep-sea organisms through the transatlantic cable that connected Europe and the US
• Modern marine science includes:

  • John Murray and Charles Wyville Thompson
  • Alexander Agassiz
  • Woods Hole Institution
  • Scripps Institution
  • Fridtjof Nansen and Sir Alistair Hardy
  • Submersibles (DSV Alvin, Deep Sea Challenger, DSV Limiting Factor)
  • Consensus of Marine Life
• John Murray and Charles Wyville Thompson went on a 1870s expedition on the HMS Challenger
• The expedition on the HMS Challenger lasted for 3 and 1/2 years and discovered 4700 new species
• Victor Hensen coined the term "plankton"
• Alexander Agassiz studied coral reefs and coloration in the ocean, and noted similarities in species in East and West coasts
• Woods Hole Institution is in Massachusets
• Scripps Institution of Oceanography is a major force of understanding commercial fishery
• Fritdjof Nansen is a Norwegian and contributed a lot of marine knowledge about the Arctic (North)
• Sir Alistair Hardy is a whaler who contributed a lot of knowledge about whales and planktons, and the Antarctic (South)
• Deep Sea Challenger was the submersible James Cameron used to complete the first solo expedition in 2012
• The DSV Limiting factor was used by Victor Vescovo in 2019 to break the record and reached the deepest part of the deep sea
• Census of Marine Life – involved over 2,700 scientists from all over the world who studied oceans for 10 years
• Victor Vescovo broke the record with his DSV Limiting Factor in 2019
• The marine environment is in a crisis
• Herodotus – coined term “Atlantic”