When I used to walk across the University of Washington campus, I sometimes passed the window of a laboratory in which a large stuffed albatross was prominently displayed. This deceased bird was mysteriously placed in a large metal birdcage. The peculiarity of the spectacle was enhanced by the fact that the laboratory housing the bird… Read More Looking for Albatross in the Archives
Alfred Wegener’s theory of “continental drift” directs attention to the origin of the continents, and in Wegener’s first publication on the topic this emphasis was reflected in the title: Die Entstehung der Kontinente (1912). By 1915, Wegener’s thinking had already evolved to an understanding that the “origin of continents,” was also, of necessity, the “origin… Read More The Origin of Oceans
Exactly seventy years ago today Japan surrendered to the United States, bringing an end to World War II and signaling the start of the American occupation. Under the direction of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, General Douglas MacArthur, and his protégé General Bonner Fellers, the U.S. military began the process of Japanese war-crimes prosecutions.… Read More Emperor Hirohito: The Marine Biologist Who Ruled Japan
One of the hashtags often used by the U.S. Navy in their various social media feeds is #PlatformsMatter. The term now frequently pops into my head while I’m doing research – a 21st century mantra for the marine historian. The importance of engineering and design for marine work is something I’ve thought about with respect to… Read More #PlatformsMatter: Design and the Marine Environment
Is Maximum Sustainable Yield a tool of science or of diplomacy? For the world’s fish populations, the concept has stood for years as a working blend of economic goals and conservation principles. The word “sustainable” lends it a particular respectability in our environmental age. It purports to answer the burning question about how many fish… Read More Fisheries Politics Masked as Science
I like to think of blog writing as a way to store away snippets of stories that I don’t want to forget. Often while researching a completely unrelated topic I’ll come across some interesting side path. Tempting as it might be to take a scenic detour, we are often constrained to the road upon which… Read More Dining with the Ichthyophagous Club
I’ve been away from this blog for a few months while working away on my dissertation. But, having given a draft over to my committee, I thought I should take the opportunity to articulate on paper (or “on blog” rather) a topic that I’ve been thinking about now for some time: can we bridge the… Read More The Entangled History of Oceanography and Medicine
As many of our readers may already be aware, a history of oceanography workshop, “Place and Practice: Doing Science in and on the Ocean,” is currently underway at King’s College in Halifax, NS. The guest of honour is ICHO founding member, and Dalhousie emeritus professor of oceanography, Dr. Eric Mills. In celebration of Eric – and in… Read More Oceanography: A Tradition of Song
Originally posted on Jacob Darwin Hamblin:
It’s fun to be a historian of the oceans these days. Environmental scholarship has yielded some fascinating clashes of perspective in recent years, and the conversations are lively. Scientists, historians of science, and environmental scholars are all working intensively to establish a narrative of the sea’s life forms, its physical and…
Last night I caught up with the latest episode of Cosmos, the rebooted Carl Sagan series now hosted by Neil Degrasse Tyson. Among the many pleasures of the new series is the amount of time given over to the history of science. As academic historians, of course, we inevitably find ways of critiquing the… Read More “Cosmos”, C. C. Patterson, and “What the Fish Knew” about the Deep Sea
History of Oceanography 