Oceans A Scientific History of Oceans and Marine Life Oceans A Scientific History of Oceans and Marine Life Michael Allaby Illustrations by Richard Garratt OCEANS: A Scientific History of Oceans and Marine Life Copyright © 2009 by Michael Allaby All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher For information contact: Facts On File, Inc An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Allaby, Michael Oceans : a scientific history of oceans and marine life / Michael Allaby; illustrations by Richard Garratt p cm — (Discovering the Earth) Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN-13: 978-0-8160-6099-3 ISBN-10: 0-8160-6099-1 Ocean—Juvenile literature Oceanography—Juvenile literature Marine ecology—Juvenile literature I Garratt, Richard ill II Title GC21.5.A45 2009 551.46—dc22 2008033709 Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755 You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.factsonfi le.com Text design by Annie O’Donnell Illustrations by Richard Garratt Photo research by Tobi Zausner, Ph.D Printed in China CP FOF 10 This book is printed on acid-free paper CONTENTS Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction xii CHAPTER MAPPING THE OCEANS Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer and His Mariner’s Mirror John Seller and His Atlas of the Ocean Gerardus Mercator and His Map Projection Maps: Drawing a Sphere on a Flat Surface 10 James Cook, the Greatest Chart-Maker 15 Robert FitzRoy, Surveying South America 21 FitzRoy and Darwin 26 Matthew Fontaine Maury, Ocean Currents, and International Cooperation 29 CHAPTER THE ORIGIN OF THE OCEANS 34 The Contracting Earth 35 James Dwight Dana and the Origin of Ocean Basins 37 Osmond Fisher and the Origin of the Pacific Basin 40 Conservation of Angular Momentum 41 3 CHAPTER STUDYING THE OCEAN FLOOR 44 HMS Challenger 45 Charles Wyville Thomson, Scientific Leader of the Challenger Expedition 48 Charles Bonnycastle and the Dream of Charting the Ocean Floor 52 Reginald Fessenden and His Echo Sounder 54 Mid-Atlantic Ridge 58 William Maurice Ewing, Mapping the Ocean Floor 62 Mariana Trench 65 Harry Hess, Robert Dietz, and Seafloor Spreading 68 Tethys, Panthalassa, Pangaea, and the Drifting Continents 72 The Geologic Timescale 77 Plates, Ridges, and Trenches 79 CHAPTER MEASURING THE DEPTH AND FLOW 85 Ferdinand Magellan, Measuring the Deep 85 El Niño 87 Lord Kelvin and How to Take Soundings from a Moving Ship 89 Antoine-Jérôme Balard and the Chemistry of the Oceans 93 Benjamin Franklin and the “River in the Ocean” 96 James Rennell, Who Mapped the Atlantic Currents CHAPTER JOURNEYS TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA 100 104 Diving Bells and Diving Suits 105 Pressure and Depth in the Ocean 106 Paul Bert and the Bends 108 Charles William Beebe and the Bathysphere 111 Auguste Piccard and the Bathyscaphe 115 The Trieste and Its Voyage to the Challenger Deep 119 Aluminaut, Alvin, and the Deep-Sea Submersibles 122 CHAPTER LIFE IN THE ABYSS 127 HMS Porcupine and Life in the Porcupine Abyss 128 Galathea and the Philippine Trench 130 Inhabitants of the Dark Depths 133 Bioluminescence 136 Robert D Ballard, Black Smokers, and Life at the Extremes 137 Extremophiles 142 CHAPTER MONSTERS 145 Mermaid 147 Sea Monsters 150 Leviathan 152 Sea Serpents 155 Giant Squid 159 Oarfish, Sunfish, and Megamouth Shark 164 Sea Snakes 168 Coelacanth 170 Living Fossils 174 CHAPTER MODERN EXPLORERS 176 Deep-Sea Drilling 177 Glomar Challenger 179 International Council for the Exploration of the Seas 180 Conclusion 184 Glossary 186 Further Resources 195 Index 199 PREFACE A lmost every day there are new stories about threats to the natural environment or actual damage to it, or about measures that have been taken to protect it The news is not always bad Areas of land are set aside for wildlife New forests are planted Steps are taken to reduce the pollution of air and water Behind all of these news stories are the scientists working to understand more about the natural world and through that understanding to protect it from avoidable harm The scientists include botanists, zoologists, ecologists, geologists, volcanologists, seismologists, geomorphologists, meteorologists, climatologists, oceanographers, and many more In their different ways all of them are environmental scientists The work of environmental scientists informs policy as well as providing news stories There are bodies of local, national, and international legislation aimed at protecting the environment and agencies charged with developing and implementing that legislation Environmental laws and regulations cover every activity that might affect the environment Consequently, every company and every citizen needs to be aware of those rules that affect them There are very many books about the environment, environmental protection, and environmental science Discovering the Earth is different—it is a multivolume set for high school students that tells the stories of how scientists arrived at their present level of understanding In doing so, this set provides a background, a historical context, to the news reports Inevitably the stories that the books tell are incomplete It would be impossible to trace all of the events in the history of each branch of the environmental sciences and recount the lives of all the individual scientists who contributed to them Instead the books provide a series of snapshots in the form of brief accounts of particular discoveries and of the people who made them These stories explain the problem that had to be solved, the way it was approached, and, in some cases, the dead ends into which scientists were drawn ix ... surveyors mapped the lands that bound them Then, having defined the boundaries of the ocean, scientists mapped the ocean currents Finally, they turned their attention to the ocean floor and what lies... board the adapted British naval ship Challenger As they charted the deepest parts of the ocean, the scientists found evidence that explained the formation of ocean basins This work led to the theories... trigonometry, navigation, and gunnery; likewise the use of globes, and other mathematical instruments, the projection of the sphere, and other parts of the mathematics”—skills a ship’s officer needed