• 1) Earth is only planet in solar system w/ significant liquid water

  • 71% of surface covered by water, 97% of water is in ocean
  • volume of ocean 11X greater than volume of land > sea level
  • "Oceanus" is a better name than "Earth" ("Erde"= original German name)

• 2) Although earth's crust formed ~4.6 BYA, ocean only formed ~4.0 BYA & not 'salty' until ~2.5 BYA

• 3) First life (prokaryotes) arose ~3.8 BYA, and complex cells (eukaryotes) by ~1.8 BYA, but marine communities we see today arose in last 500-600 million years

• 4) Much early history of marine science tied to "voyaging" ("travelling on ocean for a specific purpose"; text pg. 24)

  • Greeks & Phoenecians most extensive early ocean voyagers
  • first records of exploration kept in Library of Alexandria
  • two important Librarians were: Eratosthenes (235-196 BC; first to compute earth's circumference) and Hipparchus (165-120 BC; invented regular latitude & longitude lines)

• 5) Two other great voyaging peoples were Polynesians & Vikings

• 6) Remaining notable feats of navigation were by Europeans (Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, James Cook)

  • determining longitude is a problem
  • first reliable chronometer not available until 1759

• 7) Three important marine biological explorations: Cook, Darwin on the Beagle, Challenger expedition (birth of oceanography)

  • Challenger: sampled deep sea floor, open-ocean plankton & seawater chemistry; 50 published volumes, 4,717 new species

• 8) The 'Scientific Method' is the process by which we come to have 'knowledge' of the natural world

  • really a dispute-resolution method (observation, hypothesis, test)
  • it "Makes the mystical discussable" (E.E. Ruppert)

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