History & Limnology Flashcards
origins of the name OCEANOGRAPHY
Okeanos (or Oceanus) was the father of ocean nymphs (the Oceanids) in Greek mythology
Graphia is Greek for recording or describing
The word Oceanography is inadequate
and probably Oceanology (ology = “the science of) is more appropriate.
what is Biological Oceanography?
involves studying organisms in their environment and typically involves the use of ships, though some lab culture work/experimentation may be involved.
what is marine biology?
usually involves the study of the biology of the organism itself and how it has adapted to its environment. Often the organism is taken from its environment and studied in the lab. Usually a “hip boot” type science.
When did the greek (Herodotus) compile a map of the known world?
450 BC
when did the Greek Pytheas explore the coast of England and Norway? AND what did they develop?
325 BC
developed means of determining latitude from the declination of the North Star. He also proposed a relationship between the Moon and Tides
Who published De Temporum Ratione? AND what was the time frame?
The English monk Bede
673-735 AD
When did Ponce de Leon describe the Florida current (golf stream)?
1513 – this was during the age of exploration
when did Robert Boyle investigate the relationship between salinity temperature and pressure with depth in seawater?
1674 – during the age of exploration
Captain James Cook’s voyages produce extensive data on geography on what? When were they?
geology, biota, currents, tides, and water temperature of Atlantic and Pacific.
1768-79
who were the botanists on board Cooks voyages?
Banks (British) And Solander (Swedish) were two botanists on board
who sailed to the artic and when?
Sir John Ross
1817-1818
explore Baffin Island and he recovered starfish and polychaete worms from 1800 m thus proving life exists in the ocean depths.
in 1820 Alexander Marcet noted what?
that the proportion (ratios) of chemical ingredients
in seawater is unvarying in all the oceans
When was the Voyage of the Beagle and lead by who?
1831-36
Not really a marine science cruise, but Darwin did devise a theory as to how coral atolls are formed. Made some other observations on marine life
When was “Origin of the Species”
published and by who?
1859, Darwin
John Cleves Symmes
Proposed that the earth had holes at the poles and from these holes there were several layers inside of the earth with life on inside and outside of each layer
The United States Exploring expedition 1838-1842 was lead by who?
Led by Lt Charles Wilkes
A bit “full of himself” & selfish
Drove his men very hard
they believed symmes theory
more about wilkes
sail up the Columbia River plus he discovered that Antarctica was a continent (sailed along it for about 1500 miles)
They collected thousands of plant & animal samples
Anthropological samples formed the basis for the Smithsonian Institution
When were diatons discovered? where? by who?
1839-43 on british ships, Erebus and Terror in the Antartic
C.G. Ehrenberg was convinced that diatoms were animals because the chloroplasts looked like ovaries.
What did Edward Forbes think?
that marine organisms could not exist at depth deeper than 300 fathoms (550 m) (too cold & dark)
T.H. Huxley
came up with the idea of primodial ooz
in 1857:
examined sediments collected in the Atlantic, and he was struck by how similar under the microscope the ooze looked to the chalk in chalk cliffs. Later he re-examined the sediments (which were in alcohol
in 1868 noticed a thin layer of mucous like jelly within which were little granules — Bathybius haeckelii
when was the cable raised disproving Forbes and helping the public recognize life in the deep?
1860, raised fron 1830Meters
primordial ooz (Urschleim) + the cable got people on board
Beginnings of Oceanography
1868-70 Charles Wyville Thompson on HMS Lightning & Porcupine on summer cruises collected sea life from great depths and stirred more public interest in exploring the ocean
1871 Fish Commission started in Woods Hole, Massachusetts
1860’s what was invented? what was it for?
Secchi Disc. Used to measure water clarity
Invented by Italian astronomer Father Angelo Secchi (scientific advisor to the Pope) while working on the Papal vessel Immacolata Concezione. Used to measure water clarity
what was happened in 1972?
Stazione Zoologica established in Naples by Anton Dohrn 1872. First Marine Biological Lab in the world.
Challenger Expedition general information
1872 Ship 226 ft long. 240 men 3.5 yrs 5000 new species 7000 specimens Discovered the Mid Atlantic Ridge
what did the challenger expedition discover
Discovered that life had no depth limits.
Discovered many new species of plankton.
Mapped the sea floor. & discovered Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Collected and characterized sediments and species.
THIS CRUISE MARKED THE REAL BEGINNING
OF OCEANOGRAPHY
Who’s the father plankton reaserch?
Victor Hensen
“plankton” (wanderers).
He devised a plankton net which was QUANTITATIVE and began studies in upper 200 m. He started studying the distribution of fish eggs in the Baltic because there was interest in why fish stocks fluctuated.
What were the first plankton nets made of?
Cotton
then switched to silk becuase the cotton stretched and rotted easy
when did the german plankton expedition start?
1889
Made a big figure-8 to the equator and back.
Hensens thoughts on plankton?
convinced that plankton were distributed uniformly. However his cruise showed more plankton in north, cold waters than in tropics (but he still argued they were uniformly distributed!).
Who is Haeckel?
German scientist, attacked Hensen and said that the tropics must have more plankton than the cold waters because it was warmer and sunnier.
He only based this on what is known of terrestrial systems (polar vs rainforest).
Haeckel said also that plankton were of little importance and that macroalgae and riverine input were much more important as primary producers (base of food chain) in the sea.
Explain the Plankton Paradox
Henson was puzzled as to why he found more plankton in the colder darker northern waters.
He hired Brandt, who borrowed ideas from the terrestrial scientists. He recalled Liebig’s “Law of the Minimum” (idea that the required nutrient which is least available is the one that limits growth)
Brandt surmised that bacteria ….
break down the dead plankton, but couldn’t figure how the nutrients got from deep to upper water. Gradually, in talking with physical oceanographers, he surmised, that good mixing in north (bringing nutrients up from deep water) but permanent stratification in tropics is the reason for the N-S differences in biomass.
When did King Oscar II of Sweden initiate an international program to study causes of fluctuations in fish stocks?
1899
There were good and bad years for fishing and some thought that perhaps the fish just migrated and moved around and this was the cause. The group was called ICES (International Council for the Exploration of the Seas) Started 1902.
*The migrations were thought to be caused by changes in temperature/salinity/wind from year to year.
when was the Friday Harbor Lab established? and where?
U Washington in 1903 in San Juan Islands
when and where was Scripps insitution of oceanography established?
1903 in La Jolla CA
who was C.G. Johannes Peterson?
a Danish fisheries scientist started tagging fish (used buttons made of bone and joined by a wire.
In tagging PLAICE (flounder) he found that the fish did not migrate and pretty much stayed in the same area (many other species do migrate though).
Who rediscovered the idea you can age fish by their scales?
Heincke
they grow faster in summer than winter
who was Johannes Hjort?
Johannes Hjort picked up on this fish scale idea and, while looking at fish catch, determined that some year classes were more abundant than others
He then developed the concept to strength of year classes as related to the success of larval survival and its relation to food availability.
who thought that 60-90% of plankton were going throuhg the plankton nets?
Lohmann – He called them nanoplankton and discovered them in the guts of zooplankton.
Who postulated that Nitrogen limits production in the sea?
Karl Brandt came to Kiel in 1887.
He had described the N cycle on land and postulated that N limits production in the sea..
He noted that since the rivers were constantly putting N into the sea but the sea’s N content remained stable, then denitrifying bacteria (convert NO3 to N2 gas) must remove the excess N.
who and when was Continental Drift proposed?
In 1912 the German, Alfred Wegener, proposed that continents had once been together but drifted apart.
it was not accepted until the 1970’s
The Carlsberg foundation?
Danish Foundation funded three major cruises & research 1910-1933
beer
Johannes Schmidt studied life history of the eel
What did Schmidt notice about leptocephalus larvae?
size of leptocephalus larvae increased as you got closer to Europe
He proposed
That they
spawned in
Sargasso Sea
William Beebe & Otis Barton
Bathysphere dives near Bermuda in 1930s. Saw bioluminescence
Dives to 922 meters. Ignited public interest.
when was “the Oceans” published?
1942 published by Sverdrup, Johnson & Fleming. Provided a foundation for study of the sea. Comprehensive book.
Where is Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution? and when was it established?
1930 established on Cape Cod. Now is premier east coast lab
Claude Zobell
1st Marine Microbiologist at Scripps. Classical Microbiologist .
Used classical culturing methods. Noted near shore ca. 1000 bacteria/ml but offshore only 100. Postulated that bacteria in the sea all came from land and they were getting diluted offshore.
Later he realized that he was just culturing ca 0.1% of the bacteria and you can’t use classical culture methods to estimate abundance of marine bacteria.
Sverdrup, became the Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in ….
1938
The book “The Oceans” formed the basis for teaching oceanography.
Sverdrup is credited with giving Scripps excellent scientific foundation.
His contributions to oceanography were so vast that an oceanographic term is named after him. A “Sverdrup” is the movement of one million m3 of water per second
John Steele
In this book (1974) Steele has bacteria playing almost no role in cycling of nutrients or carbon
Gordon Riley and Steemann
Nielsen controversy
1950’s
O2 vs 14C. S-N said Riley overestimated PP in sea.
“Bacteria of little importance in ocean” theory proved incorrect by..
Late 1960’s to ’70’s:
John Hobbie & Richard Wright with the development of the acridine orange method with 14C labeled glucose to show activity. The bacteria were very active!
Synechococcus & Prochlorococcus.
The smallest (0.8-1.0 um) phytoplankters are the most important. Lohmann was right!
Discovery of very high abundance of coccoid cyanobacteria, responsible for C fixation. 1980s-90s
Martin proposed that the ice ages were caused by
iron dust.
The dust blew into the ocean and stimulated phytoplankton growth.
Phytoplankton then pulled CO2 out of the atmosphere lowering the concentration of this “greenhouse gas” causing the ice age
in the 90’s Bergh et al., and Proctor & Fuhrman
Importance of viruses in the sea. Very high virus concentrations, and plankton constantly infected. Smallest particles shown below are viruses
what is the Nansen Bottle (invented by Fridtjof Nansen in 1910)
Bottles placed in a series on Hydrographic wire with a messenger attached at bottom of each bottle to trip the next bottle in line.
The bottles contained reversing thermometers in which a column of mercury “broke” when the bottle flipped, thus recording the water temperature
what is an Argo float?
Data on temperature, wind, salinity.
Deployed, sinks, takes measurements, pops up, transmits data to satellite, sinks and repeats.
what is an Argo float?
Data on temperature, wind, salinity.
Deployed, sinks, takes measurements, pops up, transmits data to satellite, sinks and repeats.
What was the incentive for Congress to fund the Wilkes Expedition? What discoveries did it make?
explore the entrances to the holes (at the poles of the earth)
Discovered that Antartica was a continent
They collected thousands of plant & animal samples
Anthropological samples formed the basis for the Smithsonian Institution
What was Bathybius haeckelii?
Urschleim (primordial slime/ ooz)
