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Conclusions: An Ecosystem Perspective of Shallow Marine Reefs

Tim R. McClanahan and George M. Branch

in Food Webs and the Dynamics of Marine Reefs

This chapter summarizes what the authors consider to be the key and general organizing principles of kelp forests and coral reefs along gradients of oceanography, latitude, and effects of fishing and ... More

This chapter summarizes what the authors consider to be the key and general organizing principles of kelp forests and coral reefs along gradients of oceanography, latitude, and effects of fishing and resource use on these ecosystems. The general structure of these food webs is described as well as the effects of top-down versus bottom-up controls and the prevalence of trophic cascades. Human effects and recommendations for management are presented.Less

Complexity of Marine Fisheries Dynamics and Climate Interactions in the Northeast Pacific Ocean

Kevin M. Bailey, Anne B. Hollowed, and Warren S. Wooster

in Marine Ecosystems and Climate Variation: The North Atlantic: A Comparative Perspective

The impact of climate on fisheries is highly variable, indirect, and complex. Several dominant themes related to climate change and fisheries are considered in some of the chapters in this volume ... More

The impact of climate on fisheries is highly variable, indirect, and complex. Several dominant themes related to climate change and fisheries are considered in some of the chapters in this volume (Chapters 2, 3, and 6), including: complex interactions, formation of patterns over large-scales, high variability over small-scales, and the desirability of forecasting tools. This chapter discusses how these themes are focal issues in many of the world's seas, including the northeast Pacific Ocean. The chapter identifies how established climate-fish links often deteriorate with time, and underscore the role of regime shifts and switches of climatic controlling factors.Less

Materials and Methods

Taisoo Park

in Taxonomy and Distribution of the Calanoid Copepod Family Heterorhabdidae

This chapter examines specimens picked from the Isaacs–Kidd midwater trawl (IKMT) samples selected from the collections available at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO). It notes that ... More

This chapter examines specimens picked from the Isaacs–Kidd midwater trawl (IKMT) samples selected from the collections available at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO). It notes that additional specimens were obtained from the IKMT, plankton net, and the MOCNESS (Multiple Opening/Closing Net and Environmental Sensing System) samples available at the National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Institution (USNM), the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the University of Rhode Island (URI). It examines a total of 148 samples (one plankton net, 126 IKMT and 21 MOCNESS samples) collected throughout the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. It accounts the sources, the areas they represent, the number of examples examined and the extent of geographic coverage for each ocean. It notes that citation of type material includes the number of specimens, collecting gear, sampling depth, source, expedition, cruise number, station number, latitude and longitude, area, and date of collection.Less

Epilogue: The Great Trends in Exploration and the Challenges Ahead

Wolf H. Berger

in Ocean: Reflections on a Century of Exploration

The period between 1880 and 1930 laid the foundations for modern oceanography. It was a time of great expeditions and great expansion of sophisticated instrumentation. A shift to acoustics and marine ... More

The period between 1880 and 1930 laid the foundations for modern oceanography. It was a time of great expeditions and great expansion of sophisticated instrumentation. A shift to acoustics and marine physics also emerged, and along with this expansion came great advances in ocean engineering, which in turn benefitted studies in marine biology, including nutrient chemistry. In the 1960s and 1970s, large scale-cooperative investigations became dominant features. This concluding chapter presents a brief history of oceanography and some of the important contributions of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. It pays special attention to the human impact on the oceans and the life within it. The chapter also presents recommendations for future research and approaches for managing sustainability and life-support systems in the ocean.Less

Introduction: Coping With a Sea of Change

Wolf H. Berger

in Ocean: Reflections on a Century of Exploration

This book explores the physical, chemical, and biological aspects of the ocean. It discusses the history of oceanography and exploration, and pays special attention to the developments of the Scripps ... More

This book explores the physical, chemical, and biological aspects of the ocean. It discusses the history of oceanography and exploration, and pays special attention to the developments of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the largest and oldest oceanographic institute in the United States. The chapter also examines the workings of the ocean as a life-support system and highlights the consequences of human impact on the ocean environment.Less

Discovering the Ocean: Of Fish and Ships and People

Wolf H. Berger

in Ocean: Reflections on a Century of Exploration

This chapter discusses the impact of human activities on the ocean and provides a brief history of the expansion of ocean research. It begins by discussing the major causes of fishery decline in the ... More

This chapter discusses the impact of human activities on the ocean and provides a brief history of the expansion of ocean research. It begins by discussing the major causes of fishery decline in the North Atlantic. This is followed by a discussion on the history of early oceanography and the contributions of the Challenger Expedition and other expeditions that led to the progress of oceanographic science. The chapter then describes the history of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a research center concerned with the study of nearshore and deep-sea organisms, as well as the geophysics of the seafloor and life-support systems of the planet.Less

The Surveillance Ambitions of NATO’s Science Program

Simone Turchetti

in Greening the Alliance: The Diplomacy of NATO's Science and Environmental Initiatives

In its first five years of existence, the Science Committee elaborated the three funding schemes that typified the science program for the following fifty years: fellowships to study abroad, the ... More

In its first five years of existence, the Science Committee elaborated the three funding schemes that typified the science program for the following fifty years: fellowships to study abroad, the organization of meetings (or Advanced Study Institutes) and research grants for collaborative projects. Analysing the quantitative data available on these three strands, this chapters reveals that while in principle NATO agreed to fund studies in a variety of disciplines, in reality this sponsorship was slanted so as to accommodate defense ambitions. In particular the creation of three subgroups of the Science Committee recommending studies on oceanography, meteorology, and radio meteorology marked the effort to prioritize projects aligned to the alliance's surveillance operations.Less

Great Whales as Prey Using Demography and Bioenergetics to Infer Interactions in Marine Mammal Communities

DANIEL F. DOAK, TERRIE M. WILLIAMS, and JAMES A. ESTES

in Whales, Whaling, and Ocean Ecosystems

One way to address big-scale problems and processes is to use small-scale data to construct and test mechanistic models of events at higher levels of organization and at larger spatial scales. Even ... More

One way to address big-scale problems and processes is to use small-scale data to construct and test mechanistic models of events at higher levels of organization and at larger spatial scales. Even though this general approach to understanding ocean ecosystems underpins much of biological oceanography, it has not been so commonly used in efforts to understand the population and community dynamics of marine mammals. This chapter uses demographic and bioenergetic tools to explore difficult-to-observe predator-prey interactions in marine mammal communities. It aims to understand better the interactions of mammal-feeding killer whales with their prey species in the North Pacific region, particularly in the vicinity of the Aleutian archipelago.Less

Whales and Whaling in the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea Oceanographic Insights and Ecosystem Impacts

ALAN M. SPRINGER, GUS B. VAN VLIET, JOHN F. PIATT, and ERIC M. DANNER

in Whales, Whaling, and Ocean Ecosystems

Did the removal of megatons of upper-trophic-level consumers significantly alter food-web dynamics by removing significant levels of predatory controls over prey populations, removing an important ... More

Did the removal of megatons of upper-trophic-level consumers significantly alter food-web dynamics by removing significant levels of predatory controls over prey populations, removing an important prey resource for predator populations, and changing the sensitivity of the ecosystem to physical forcing because of new predator-prey functional relationships? In order to address this question, it is necessary to understand where and when whales were harvested in the North Pacific Ocean, and how this ultimately affected whale distribution. Whales were not uniformly distributed across this broad region, and the roles they played were concentrated in relatively small areas. This chapter shows where great whales formerly were found in abundance in the North Pacific, relates those distributions to oceanography, and briefly explores some examples of the magnitude of change that might have resulted from the loss of great whales in the Aleutian Islands and Bering Sea.Less

Changing the Mission:: From the Cold War to Climate Change

Naomi Oreskes

in Science and Technology in the Global Cold War

In the early 1990s a group of American oceanographers sought to change their focus away from Cold War military concerns and toward environmental matters related to anthropogenic climate change. ... More

In the early 1990s a group of American oceanographers sought to change their focus away from Cold War military concerns and toward environmental matters related to anthropogenic climate change. Drawing on insights and technologies developed in the Cold War, they proposed an experiment called ATOC—Acoustic Tomography of Ocean Climate—designed to provide definitive evidence of global warming. But the project was blocked when environmentalists and marine biologists raised concerns that it would harm marine mammals. In the ensuing public debate, the public judged the scientists more on their past activities than their present aspirations: many citizens distrusted the scientists’ new-found environmental passion and believed that global warming was a cover story hiding a secret military project. In the end, they judged scientists who had dedicated their lives to studying the ocean as a theatre of warfare not credible when they presented themselves as trustworthy guardians of the ocean as an abode of life. The failure of ATOC suggests that while Cold war military support led to numerous fundamental advances in understanding the ocean environment, it also created a community of scientists who were disrespectful not only of lay concerns but even of scientific evidence from other domains, unable to explain their work to diverse publics, and distrusted by significant segments of the American people. Forty years of military patronage were not just epistemically consequential, they were socially and culturally consequential as well.Less

Matthew Fontaine Maury's “Sea of Fire”: Hydrography, Biogeography, and Providence in the Tropics

D. Graham Burnett

in Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire

This chapter discusses the hydrographic mapping of Matthew Fontaine Maury. The significance of his mapping methods was important for the development of oceanography and for his particular conception ... More

This chapter discusses the hydrographic mapping of Matthew Fontaine Maury. The significance of his mapping methods was important for the development of oceanography and for his particular conception of tropicality. It lay firmly in the tradition of natural theology. But far from being an obstacle, this provided a congenial frame for his Humboldtian vision of science. The chapter also discusses Maury understanding of the earth's tropical zones. Maury's natural theological vision of the sea is not a blind ally in the history of oceanography but a legitimate, significant, and even, potentially, a constitutive episode in the history of the sciences of the sea. Maury not only extended a metrical, collative natural theological framework to the dark spaces of the sea, he also extended a system of enlightening scientific observation to sailors, a notoriously benighted population.Less

Conclusion: The Tides of Empire

in Tides of History: Ocean Science and Her Majesty's Navy

Scientific interest in the ocean followed directly from the growing popular fascination in the late eighteenth century with the natural history and physical topography of the seashore. Beginning in ... More

Scientific interest in the ocean followed directly from the growing popular fascination in the late eighteenth century with the natural history and physical topography of the seashore. Beginning in the intertidal zone and then widening their gaze, by the mid-nineteenth century scientists had rendered the oceans not only comprehensible and controllable but also usable for commerce and imperialism. This conclusion examines the incentives that pushed governments to set up networks of observers in terrestrial magnetism, meteorology, and the study of the ocean itself. This move from science practiced in the laboratory to science practiced over the whole globe was a defining feature of nineteenth-century ocean science. This conclusion therefore offers a new perspective from which to view John William Lubbock, William Whewell, and George Biddell Airy's work on the tides, John Herschel's and Robert Fitzroy's work in meteorology, the intense study of the earth's magnetism, the beginning of oceanography, and ultimately the rise and institutionalization of multinational collaborations.Less

Testing the Underwater Ear: Hearing, Standardizing, and Classifying Marine Sounds from World War I to the Cold War

Lino Camprubí and Alexandra Hui

in Testing Hearing: The Making of Modern Aurality

World War II fueled technologies for underwater listening, such as hydrophones, and Cold War antisubmarine strategies further rendered the oceans audible, noisy even. This novel ability to hear ... More

World War II fueled technologies for underwater listening, such as hydrophones, and Cold War antisubmarine strategies further rendered the oceans audible, noisy even. This novel ability to hear marine sounds radically transformed not only the discipline of oceanography but also the oceans themselves and the people listening. An examination of U.S. Navy ear-training manuals and sound recordings reveals continuities of testing protocols and ontologies between military oceanographers and marine biologists. Underwater listeners were additionally informed by musical training and technologies such as graphic representation and image processing software. In the oceanic soundscape, marine life was defined relative to Soviet vessels and was approached through an epistemology of error: plankton stood in the way of sound waves, shrimp distorted hydrophone receptions, and whales emitted enigmatically unclassifiable sounds that questioned existing sound signature catalogs. As technologies and data were disclosed to the biologists, this knowledge about error became scientific knowledge.Less

Thalassomania: Modernity and the Sea

Alexis Wick

in Red Sea: In Search of Lost Space

This chapter examines the emergence of the Red Sea as an operative concept at the center of the discursive formation of modernity, with particular emphasis on its surprisingly important place in the ... More

This chapter examines the emergence of the Red Sea as an operative concept at the center of the discursive formation of modernity, with particular emphasis on its surprisingly important place in the writings of major figures of modern thought. It shows that the idea of the sea forming a unitary and coherent space can be traced back to the early nineteenth century and the foundations of the modern disciplines of history, geography, botany, and most especially oceanography. It also considers the discursive parameters that permit affirmations of Mediterranean unity in particular, and the coherence of maritime basins in general, to be “persuasive as statements of fact.” Finally, it explores how the sea found pride of place in the works of Adam Smith, who laid the foundations for the theory of free trade.Less

Data assimilation in coastal oceanography: IS4DVAR in the Regional Ocean Modelling System (ROMS)

J. Zavala-Garay, J. Wilkin, and J. Levin

in Advanced Data Assimilation for Geosciences: Lecture Notes of the Les Houches School of Physics: Special Issue, June 2012

This chapter presents examples of variational data assimilation in coastal oceanography using the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS). Realizing that satellite data is the only source of ... More

This chapter presents examples of variational data assimilation in coastal oceanography using the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS). Realizing that satellite data is the only source of information in real time in most parts of the world ocean, the Ocean Modeling Group at Rutgers University has developed methodologies to exploit the information content in remotely sensed observations. This chapter evaluates the extent to which incremental, strong constraint, four-dimensional variational data assimilation (IS4DVAR) can improve prediction of mesoscale variability using ROMS. Examples of two applications of IS4DVAR in two very different dynamical regimes are presented: the East Australia Current (EAC) and the Middle Atlantic Bight (MAB). The two main sources of satellite information, namely sea surface temperature (SST) and sea surface height anomaly (SSHA), are found to be complementary, and therefore both need to be assimilated in order to approximate the three-dimensional structure of the ocean.Less