2
Chapter 1: Toward an Ecological Geography of the Sea
It will be useful, before proceeding further, to consider how oceanographic research at
the end of the 20th century changed our understanding of the pelagic ecosystem, and to
what extent the new observing systems that have matured in recent years have changed
our knowledge of how oceanographic and ecological processes may best be partitioned.
Many things have evolved, both in fact and in perception, since the first edition of this
work was being drafted. The task set for this first chapter is briefly to review some aspects
of these changes.
The Progressive Exploration of Oceanic
and Shelf Ecosystems
The simple, descriptive phase of biological oceanography occupied almost a full century,
beginning with the straightforward exploration of the marine biota of all oceans by the
Challenger in 1872–1876. Though some of the very early voyages, notably the Plankton Expedition of 1889, also laid the foundations of our understanding of the biology
of oceanic plankton, post-Challenger research on ecological processes was principally
pursued in coastal laboratories—especially at Naples, Kiel, Plymouth, and Woods Hole.
Quite rapidly, people in these laboratories obtained a basic understanding of the cycle of
pelagic production and consumption, a learning process well described by Mills (1989).
Of course, everything changed rapidly in the mid-20th century. It may be hard now
to appreciate to what extent the Second World War altered the face of oceanography;
governments suddenly understood that this science could produce answers relevant to
their strategic concerns. In the United States, this was the period when coastal marine
laboratories, such as Scripps in California, grew into the great ocean-going institutions.
In those years, modern oceanography was born from the hunger of the U.S. and Soviet
navies for information about the ocean: it seemed that the flood of new posts, new ships,
and new institutes was unstoppable, a situation that continued on into the 1960s. Pelagic
ecologists began seriously to explore the open ocean, perhaps mainly because of naval
interest in deep sonic scattering layers.
It was at this time that the first modern regional surveys were mounted to begin
to understand the distribution of properties in the open ocean. These were multiship,
seasonal explorations of large oceanic regions of which some, like EASTROPAC and
EQUALANT, responded to the interest of the U.S. fishing industry in the exploration of
the then-unknown resources of the high seas. Others, like the International Indian Ocean
Expedition (IIOE), represented the beginnings of international cooperation between
oceanographers at sea. The results of these surveys lie in the “Atlas” section of your
library and have not yet been integrated into any modern database.
During the same period, large Russian research ships were also exploring the oceans,
led by scientists from the Academy of Science in Moscow; a major focus of their work was
the biogeography of the pelagos, leading to the studies of K. Beklemishev, M. Vinogradov,
and others, to which I shall refer later.
As Karl Banse reminded us, a major catalyst for rapid progress during this period
was the introduction into biological oceanography during the 1950s of bulk methods for
chlorophyll, seston, proteins, and carbon uptake rates. These enabled us to take samples
that matched the bottle data of the physical and chemical oceanographers, and it is to
them that we owe the first basin-scale maps of biological processes, such as the primary
production of plant biomass. It was by using these methods that we could finally associate
biological rate processes with oceanographic processes at regional scale—but always in
hindsight, not yet in real time.
Chapter 1: Toward an Ecological Geography of the Sea
It will be useful, before proceeding further, to consider how oceanographic research at
the end of the 20th century changed our understanding of the pelagic ecosystem, and to
what extent the new observing systems that have matured in recent years have changed
our knowledge of how oceanographic and ecological processes may best be partitioned.
Many things have evolved, both in fact and in perception, since the first edition of this
work was being drafted. The task set for this first chapter is briefly to review some aspects
of these changes.
The Progressive Exploration of Oceanic
and Shelf Ecosystems
The simple, descriptive phase of biological oceanography occupied almost a full century,
beginning with the straightforward exploration of the marine biota of all oceans by the
Challenger in 1872–1876. Though some of the very early voyages, notably the Plankton Expedition of 1889, also laid the foundations of our understanding of the biology
of oceanic plankton, post-Challenger research on ecological processes was principally
pursued in coastal laboratories—especially at Naples, Kiel, Plymouth, and Woods Hole.
Quite rapidly, people in these laboratories obtained a basic understanding of the cycle of
pelagic production and consumption, a learning process well described by Mills (1989).
Of course, everything changed rapidly in the mid-20th century. It may be hard now
to appreciate to what extent the Second World War altered the face of oceanography;
governments suddenly understood that this science could produce answers relevant to
their strategic concerns. In the United States, this was the period when coastal marine
laboratories, such as Scripps in California, grew into the great ocean-going institutions.
In those years, modern oceanography was born from the hunger of the U.S. and Soviet
navies for information about the ocean: it seemed that the flood of new posts, new ships,
and new institutes was unstoppable, a situation that continued on into the 1960s. Pelagic
ecologists began seriously to explore the open ocean, perhaps mainly because of naval
interest in deep sonic scattering layers.
It was at this time that the first modern regional surveys were mounted to begin
to understand the distribution of properties in the open ocean. These were multiship,
seasonal explorations of large oceanic regions of which some, like EASTROPAC and
EQUALANT, responded to the interest of the U.S. fishing industry in the exploration of
the then-unknown resources of the high seas. Others, like the International Indian Ocean
Expedition (IIOE), represented the beginnings of international cooperation between
oceanographers at sea. The results of these surveys lie in the “Atlas” section of your
library and have not yet been integrated into any modern database.
During the same period, large Russian research ships were also exploring the oceans,
led by scientists from the Academy of Science in Moscow; a major focus of their work was
the biogeography of the pelagos, leading to the studies of K. Beklemishev, M. Vinogradov,
and others, to which I shall refer later.
As Karl Banse reminded us, a major catalyst for rapid progress during this period
was the introduction into biological oceanography during the 1950s of bulk methods for
chlorophyll, seston, proteins, and carbon uptake rates. These enabled us to take samples
that matched the bottle data of the physical and chemical oceanographers, and it is to
them that we owe the first basin-scale maps of biological processes, such as the primary
production of plant biomass. It was by using these methods that we could finally associate
biological rate processes with oceanographic processes at regional scale—but always in
hindsight, not yet in real time.