From marine ecology to biological oceanography

“The marine biologist in particular will continue to be a powerful ally to the oceanographer; for, in any expedition he may undertake, strictly oceanographic observations are essential to his biological studies. He will, as in the past, make important contributions to oceanography, although engaged under the banner of marine biology” (H. A. Marmer, 1934, p. 34)

Abstract

Looking back from the 1990s it seems natural to view the work done in the Biologische Anstalt Helgoland by Friedrich Heincke and his colleagues, beginning in 1892, as marine ecology or marine biology, and that done in Kiel, under Victor Hensen and Karl Brandt, as biological oceanography. But historical analysis shows this view to be untenable. Biological oceanography, as a research category and a profession, does not appear until at least the 1950's. In the German tradition of marine research, “Ozeanographie”, originating in 19th century physical geography, did not include the biological sciences. The categories “Meereskunde” and “Meeresforschung” covered all aspects of marine research in Germany from the 1890's to the present day. “Meeresbiologie” like that of Brandt, Heincke, and other German marine scientists, fitted comfortably into these. But in North America no such satisfactory professional or definitional structure existed before the late 1950's. G. A. Riley, one of the first biological oceanographers, fought against descriptive, nonquantitative American ecology. In 1951 he described biological oceanography as the “ecology of marine populations”, linking it with quantitative population ecology in the U.S.A. By the end of the 1960's the U.S. National Science Foundation had recognized biological oceanography as a research area supported separately from marine biology. There was no need for the category “biological oceanography” in German marine science because its subject matter lay under the umbrella of “Meereskunde” or “Meeresforschung”. But in North America, biological oceanography — a fundamental fusion of physics and chemistry with marine biology — was created to give this marine science a status higher than that of the conceptually overloaded ecological sciences. The sociologists Durkheim and Mauss claimed in 1903 that, “the classification of things reproduces the classification of men”; similarly, in science, the classification of professions reproduces the status that their practitioners hope to achieve.