Preface
To all those sailors / Who dreamed before us / Of another way to sail the oceans.
The dedication of this Volume is meant to recall, and honour, the bold pioneers of
ocean exploration, ancient as well as modern. As a marine scientist, dealing with the
oceans through the complex tools, filters and mechanisms of contemporary research,
I have always wondered what it was like, in centuries past, to look at that vast horizon with the naked eye, not knowing what was ahead, and yet to sail on. I have tried
to imagine what ancient sailors felt, when “the unknown swirls around and engulfs
the mind”, as a forgotten author simply described the brave, perhaps reckless, act
of facing such a hostile, menacing and yet fascinating adventure. Innovation has
always been the key element, I think, for their success: another way, a better way, a
more effective, safer and worthier way was the proper answer to the challenge.
The map of our world has been changed time and again, from the geographical
as well as the social, economic and scientific points of view, by the new discoveries
of those sailors. One of the positive qualities of human beings is without doubt
the inborn desire to expand their horizons, to see what lies beyond, to learn and
understand. Exploring the oceans not only brought fame and fortune to the sailors,
it also opened the way to progress in all spheres of life: new lands, new markets
and new people meant new ideas as well, new perceptions of the world around. In
this sense, the “space” oceanographers who gathered in Venice, for the first “Oceans
from Space” Symposium, in 1980, were like those pioneers who opened new trade
routes, as what they discovered since then in reality surpassed many times what was
expected in the beginning.
Both in ancient and in modern times, novel expeditions cost a lot. Merchants
and rulers had a keen interest to invest into such risky enterprises as fragile ships
sailing towards the unknown, because of the profits to be made with the goods
they would bring back, and of the invaluable benefits brought by new discoveries.
Oceanographers had similar, if less material goals, when they started to look at the
expensive tools of space exploration, for opening new avenues of research. Satellite
missions require huge investments, and are not immune from the risk of total failure, but they do bring back invaluable goods such as plentiful data, generated by
large-scale, long-term systematic observations, as well as surprising, intriguing and
promising new knowledge. The oceanographers who came back to Venice, for the
vii
To all those sailors / Who dreamed before us / Of another way to sail the oceans.
The dedication of this Volume is meant to recall, and honour, the bold pioneers of
ocean exploration, ancient as well as modern. As a marine scientist, dealing with the
oceans through the complex tools, filters and mechanisms of contemporary research,
I have always wondered what it was like, in centuries past, to look at that vast horizon with the naked eye, not knowing what was ahead, and yet to sail on. I have tried
to imagine what ancient sailors felt, when “the unknown swirls around and engulfs
the mind”, as a forgotten author simply described the brave, perhaps reckless, act
of facing such a hostile, menacing and yet fascinating adventure. Innovation has
always been the key element, I think, for their success: another way, a better way, a
more effective, safer and worthier way was the proper answer to the challenge.
The map of our world has been changed time and again, from the geographical
as well as the social, economic and scientific points of view, by the new discoveries
of those sailors. One of the positive qualities of human beings is without doubt
the inborn desire to expand their horizons, to see what lies beyond, to learn and
understand. Exploring the oceans not only brought fame and fortune to the sailors,
it also opened the way to progress in all spheres of life: new lands, new markets
and new people meant new ideas as well, new perceptions of the world around. In
this sense, the “space” oceanographers who gathered in Venice, for the first “Oceans
from Space” Symposium, in 1980, were like those pioneers who opened new trade
routes, as what they discovered since then in reality surpassed many times what was
expected in the beginning.
Both in ancient and in modern times, novel expeditions cost a lot. Merchants
and rulers had a keen interest to invest into such risky enterprises as fragile ships
sailing towards the unknown, because of the profits to be made with the goods
they would bring back, and of the invaluable benefits brought by new discoveries.
Oceanographers had similar, if less material goals, when they started to look at the
expensive tools of space exploration, for opening new avenues of research. Satellite
missions require huge investments, and are not immune from the risk of total failure, but they do bring back invaluable goods such as plentiful data, generated by
large-scale, long-term systematic observations, as well as surprising, intriguing and
promising new knowledge. The oceanographers who came back to Venice, for the
vii