Oceanography is a type of science that covers a variety of things. Some of those things are marine organisms, marine ecosystems, ocean currents and waves, and last of all the geology of the ocean floor. Oceanography can also be called oceanology or marine science and divides itself into four branches. They are marine biology, marine chemistry,  marine geology and marine physics. 

Marine biology can also be called biological oceanography and it is the study of plants, animals, and microbes in the ocean and how they interact with each other. Marine chemistry is also sometimes called chemical oceanography and it is the study of chemistry in the ocean and how the ocean interacts with the atmosphere. Marine geology is the study of rocks and geology on the ocean floor, this branch also studies plate tectonics. Marine physics is sometimes also called physical oceanography. marine physics explores information about waves, sounds travel, light and radio waves in the ocean.

The first known of records of observations are by Aristotle and they were simple records about ocean tides. Back in the mid 1700’s oceanography was not very advances and it mostly recorded information that was easy to spot. Oceanographers did not put much into their work because of lack of engineering and transportation. For example, the only creatures that they knew were in the oceans were those caught in nets from fishermen and ones who were washed up onto the beach.

There were two explorers that recorded a lot of work. The first is Louis Antoine de Bougainville. He took a journey between 1766 and 1769 and calculated, explored, and recorded much ocean information in the time period. The second man who record a lot of information in oceanography was James Cook. James Cook traveled a very long eleven years between 1768 and 1779. both James Cook and Louis Antoine de Bougainville journeyed in the South Pacific.

But those explorers were just amateurs and one of the first bigger explorers turned scientists who published their work for the public was Charles Darwin. He wrote a paper about reefs after his seconds voyage on The Beagle from 1831 to 1836. Also James Rennell wrote the first scientific textbooks on the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. And lastly, James Clark Ross took the first sound recording of the deep sea in 1840.

The first text book of oceanography was written by Matthew Fontaine Maury in 1855 and this launched the study of oceans and brought up a whole new slew of explorers and scientists wanting to explore oceanography even deeper. Marine Ecology was even created when Edward Forbes started dredging in the Aegean Sea in the 19th century. And After the middle of the 19th century loads of botanical and zoological information was discovered. Even in 1871 the british government funded an expedition to explore the oceans and after that, Oceanography became a quantifiable science in 1872. After that the scots Charles Wyville Thompson and Sir John Murray launched the challenger expedition from 1872 to 1876. Once that expedition had ended a 50 volume set covering biological, physical, and geological information was published. There were also 4,417 new species that were discovered. 

The Challenger was one of the larger expeditions and it wasn’t the only expedition, there were a lot more smaller ones. Other European and American nations were sending out expeditions, and so were other public and private places. The first ship built for oceanography expeditions was the Albatross in 1882. The four month expedition on the Albatross was led by John Murray and John Hjort. It was the most ambitious trip of it’s time and it was made into a classic book, The Depths of the Ocean.

Finally, many oceanography institutes were founded in the United States. Two of the bigger ones are the Sripps institute in 1892 and Woodshole in 1930. There is also a major research institution in Britain called the national Oceanography center, it is the successor to the Institute of Oceanography. 

After realizing that oceanography can help the world a man named Fridtjof Nansen froze his ship called Fram in the Arctic Ocean Ice in 1893. By doing this he could gain a lot of information on oceanographic, meteorological, and astronomical data. After that, in about the 1950’s August Piccard invented something called the bathscope which was used to go deep into the oceans depths. Also, with increased technology oceanography has become a much advanced science!