Skip to main content

Historiography of Marine Biology

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Handbook of the Historiography of Biology

Part of the book series: Historiographies of Science ((HISTSC))

Abstract

Marine biology is a difficult field to define. Those who work in the field come from a variety of subdisciplines, including chemistry, ecology, and biology. The history of this interdisciplinary field is equally as inclusive, encompassing historians of environment, oceanographies, fisheries, and culture. This chapter examines three distinct areas of historiography: biological oceanography, marine research stations, and public interactions with the ocean. A review of the literature shows that while there are distinct areas of study, there are few internal debates that bind the community. I identify new trends in the field and suggest avenues for future research.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 379.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 449.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Adamowsky N (2015) The mysterious science of the sea, 1775–1943. Routledge, London and New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Adler A (2014) The ship as laboratory: making space for field science at sea. J Hist Biol 47(3):333–362

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Adler A, Dücker E (2018) When Pasteurian science went to sea: the birth of marine microbiology. J Hist Biol 51(1):107–133

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Allard DC (1978) Spencer Fullerton Baird and the U.S. fish commission. Arno Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Allard DC (1990) The fish commission laboratory and its influence on the founding of the marine biological laboratory. J Hist Biol 23(2):251–270

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Allard DC (1999) The origins and early history of the steamer albatross, 1880–18. Mar Fish Rev 61(4):1–21

    Google Scholar 

  • Allen D (1996) Tastes and crazes. In: Jardine N, Secord JA, Spary EA (eds) Cultures of natural history. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 394–407

    Google Scholar 

  • Anctil M (2018) Luminous creatures: the history and science of light production in living organisms. McGill-Queen’s Press-MQUP

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson K, Rozwadowski H (2017) Soundings and crossings: doing science at sea, 1800–1970. Watson International Publishing

    Google Scholar 

  • Arch JK (2018) Bringing whales ashore: oceans and the environment of early modern Japan. University of Washington Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Benson, Keith Rodney. 1979. William Keith Brooks (1848–1908): a case study of morphology and the development of American biology. PhD dissertation, Oregon State University

    Google Scholar 

  • Benson KR (1988a) Review paper: the Naples Stazione Zoologica and its impact on the emergence of American marine biology. J Hist Biol 21:331–341

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benson KR (1988b) Why marine stations? The teaching argument. Am Zool 28:7–14

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benson KR (1988c) Laboratories on the New England shore: the ‘somewhat different direction’ of American marine biology. N Engl Q 56:53–78

    Google Scholar 

  • Benson KR (2001) Summer camp, seaside station, and marine laboratory: marine biology and its institutional identity. Hist Stud Phys Biol Sci 32(1):11–18

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benson E (2012) Endangered science: the regulation of research by the US marine mammal protection and endangered species acts. Hist Stud Nat Sci 42(1):30–61

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Benson KR, Rehbock PF (eds) (2002) Oceanographic history: the Pacific and beyond. University of Washington Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Benson KR, Rozwadowski HM (eds) (2007) Extremes: oceanography’s adventures at the poles, vol 4. Science History Publications

    Google Scholar 

  • Blackfish directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite Hollywood, CA: CNN, Magnolia Pictures, 2013

    Google Scholar 

  • Braje TJ (2016) Shellfish for the celestial empire: The rise and fall of commercial abalone fishing in California. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City

    Google Scholar 

  • Brunner B (2012) The ocean at home: an illustrated history of the aquarium. Reaktion Books

    Google Scholar 

  • Burnett DG (2012) The sounding of the whale: science and cetaceans in the twentieth century. University of Chicago Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Bushnell K (Forthcoming-a) Tennyson’s kraken under the microscope and in the aquarium. In: Abberley W (ed) Underwater worlds: aquatic visions in art, science, and literature. Palgrave Macmillan

    Google Scholar 

  • Bushnell K (Forthcoming-b) A whale is a palimpsest: dismembering and remembering in Moby-dick and fighting the whales. In: Grenier K, Mushal A (eds) Memory and commemoration

    Google Scholar 

  • Bushnell K (Forthcoming-c) Looking at leviathan: the first captive cetaceans in Britain. In: Coughlin M, Gephart E (eds) Nineteenth century ecocritical visual cultures

    Google Scholar 

  • Christie A (2011) A taste for seaweed: William Kilburn’s late eighteenth-century designs for printed cottons. J Des Hist 24(4):299–314

    Google Scholar 

  • Colby JM (2018) Orca: how we came to know and love the ocean’s greatest predator. Oxford University Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Crylen JC (2015) The cinematic aquarium: a history of undersea film. Dissertation, University of Iowa

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis SG (1997) Spectacular nature: Corporate culture and the Sea World experience. Univ of California Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis FR (2012) Archie Carr: the man who saved sea turtles. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • De Bont R (2009) Between the laboratory and the deep blue sea: space issues in the marine stations of Naples and Wimereux. Soc Stud Sci 39(2):199–227

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • De Bont R (2015) Stations in the field: a history of place-based animal research, 1870–1930. University of Chicago Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Deacon M (1971) Scientists and the sea. Academic Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Duggins M (2016) Pacific Ocean flowers: colonial seaweed albums. In: The sea and nineteenth-century Anglophone literary culture. Routledge, pp 139–154

    Google Scholar 

  • Ekerholm H (2015) Keeping a house for science: Sofia Kristensson as matriarch and gatekeeper at Kristineberg zoological station as a scientific household, 1877–1889. Sci Context 28(4):587–611

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ekerholm H, Grandin K, Nordlund C, Schell PA (2018) Understanding field science institutions. Science History Publications, Sagamore Beach

    Google Scholar 

  • Ericson K (2017) Making space for red tide: discolored water and the early twentieth century Bayscape of Japanese pearl cultivation. J Hist Biol 50(2):393–423

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Finley C (2011) All the fish in the sea: maximum sustainable yield and the failure of fisheries management. University of Chicago Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Finley C (2017) All the boats on the ocean: how government subsidies led to global overfishing. University of Chicago Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Fyfe A (2004) Science and salvation: Evangelical popular science publishing in Victorian Britain. University of Chicago Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Galtsoff PS. 1962. The story of the bureau of commercial fisheries, Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts. United States Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Commercial Fisheries

    Google Scholar 

  • García SV (2014) Commercial fishing and the study of marine fauna in Argentina, 1890–1930. História, Saúde, Ciências – Manguinhos, Rio de Janeiro 21(3):827–845

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gould CG (2004) The remarkable life of William Beebe: explorer and naturalist. Island Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Groeben C (1982) Charles darwin-anton dohrn. Macchiaroli, Napoli 118

    Google Scholar 

  • Groeben C (1984) The Naples zoological station and woods hole. Oceanus 27(1):60–69

    Google Scholar 

  • Groeben C (1993a) The Stazione Zoologica: a clearing house for marine organisms. In: Benson K, Rehbock PF (eds) Oceanographic history: the Pacific and beyond. University of Washington Press, Seattle, pp 537–548

    Google Scholar 

  • Groeben C (1993b) Karl Ernst von Baer [1792–1876], Anton Dohrn [1840–1909]: correspondence. Trans Am Philos Soc 83(3):1–156

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Groeben C (2006) The Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn as a place for the circulation of scientific ideas: vision and management. In Anderson KL, Thiery C (eds), Information for Responsible Fisheries: Libraries as Mediators (Fort Pierce, FL: IAMSLIC): 291–299

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamera J (2012) Parlor ponds: the cultural work of the American home aquarium, 1850–1970. University of Michigan Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamlin C (1986) Robert Warington and the moral economy of the aquarium. Journal of the History of Biology 19(1):131–153

    Google Scholar 

  • Hardy PK (2017) Where science meets the sea: research vessels and the construction of knowledge in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Dissertation, Johns Hopkins University

    Google Scholar 

  • Hubbard JM (2006) A science on the scales: the rise of Canadian Atlantic fisheries biology, 1898–1939. University of Toronto Press, Toronto

    Google Scholar 

  • Hubbard J, Wildish D, Stephenson RL (2014) A century of maritime science: the St. Andrews biological station 1908–2008. University of Toronto Press, Toronto

    Google Scholar 

  • Huber F, Wessely C (eds) (2018) Milieu. Umgebungen des Lebendigen in der Moderne. Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn

    Google Scholar 

  • Jørgensen D (2012) Mixing oil and water: naturalizing offshore oil platforms in Gulf Coast aquariums. J Am Stud 46(2):461–480

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keiner C (2004) Modeling Neptune’s Garden: The chesapeake bay hydraulic model, 1965–1984. In: Helen Rozwadowski, David Van Keuren (eds) The Machine in Neptune’s Garden:273–314

    Google Scholar 

  • Kofoid CA (1910) The biological stations of Europe. No. 4. US Government Printing Office

    Google Scholar 

  • Kohler R (2002) Landscapes and labscapes: exploring the lab-field border in biology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kroll G (2008) America’s ocean wilderness: a cultural history of twentieth-century exploration. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence

    Google Scholar 

  • Luk C (Forthcoming) Building ‘an embryo Chinese woods hole’: the marine biological station at Amoy university. In: Maienschein J, Ankeny R, Matlin K (eds) From the beach to the bench: why marine biological studies? University of Chicago Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Maienschein J (1981) Shifting assumptions in American biology: embryology, 1890–1910. J Hist Biol 14(1):89–113

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Maienschein J (1985) Agassiz, Hyatt, Whitman, and the birth of the marine biological laboratory. Biol Bull 168(3S):26–34

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maienschein J (1987) Physiology, biology and the advent of physiological morphology. In: Geison G (ed) Physiology in the American context: 1850–1940. American Physiological Society, Bethesda, pp 177–194

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Maienschein J (1988) History of American marine laboratories: why do history at the seashore? Am Zool 28(1):15–25

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maienschein J (1989) 100 years exploring life, 1888–1988: marine biological laboratory at woods hole. Jones & Bartlett Publishing, Boston

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Maienschein J (1991) Transforming traditions in American biology, 1880–1915. Johns Hopkins University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Maienschein J, Rainger R, Benson KR (eds) (1991) The expansion of American biology. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick

    Google Scholar 

  • Manning KR (1985) Black Apollo of science: the life of Ernest Everett just. Oxford University Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Matsen B (2006) Descent: the heroic discovery of the abyss. Vintage

    Google Scholar 

  • Matsen B (2009) Jacques Cousteau: the sea king. Vintage

    Google Scholar 

  • McEvoy AF (1990) The fisherman’s problem: ecology and law in the California fisheries, 1850–1980. Cambridge University Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Mills EL (1989) Biological oceanography: an early history, 1870–1960. University of Toronto Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitman G (1999) Reel nature: America’s romance with wildlife on film. University of Washington Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Muka SK (2014) Working at water’s edge: life sciences at American marine stations, 1880–1930. University of Pennsylvania

    Google Scholar 

  • Muka SK (2016a) Imagining the sea: the impact of marine field work on scientific portraiture. In: Anderson K, Helen M (eds) Soundings and crossings: doing science at sea 1800–1970. Science History Publications, Rozwadowski

    Google Scholar 

  • Muka SK (2016b) The right tool and the right place for the job: the importance of the field in experimental neurophysiology, 1880–1945. Hist Philos Life Sci 38(3):7

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Muka SK (2018) Conservation constellations: the role of public aquariums in the American marine conservation network. In: Minteer BA, Maienschein J, Collins JP (eds) The ark and beyond: the evolution of zoo and aquarium conservation. University of Chicago Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Nielsen LA (1976) Evolution of fisheries management philosophy. Mar Fish Rev 38(12):15–22

    Google Scholar 

  • Nyhart LK (2009) Modern nature: the rise of the biological perspective in Germany. University of Chicago Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Oppenheimer JM (1980) Some historical backgrounds for the establishment of the Stazione Zoologica at Naples. In: Sears M, Merrimen D (eds) Oceanography: the past. Springer, New York, pp 179–187

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Oreskes N (2014) Scaling up our vision. Isis 105(2):379–391

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pauly P (1987) Controlling life: Jacques Loeb & the engineering ideal in biology. Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Pauly P (1988) Summer resort and scientific discipline: woods hole and the structure of American biology, 1882–1925. In: Rainger R, Benson KR, Maineschein J (eds) The American development of biology. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, pp 121–150

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Pauly P (2000) Biologists and the promise of American life: from Meriwether Lewis to Alfred Kinsey. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ravalli R (2019) Sea otters: a history. University of Nebraska, Lincoln/London

    Google Scholar 

  • Rollo MF, Queiroz MI, Brandão T (2014) The sea as science: ocean research institutions and strategies in Portugal in the twentieth century (from the first republic to democracy). Hist Cienc Saude Manguinhos 21(3):847–865

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Romanes GJ (1885) Jelly-fish, star-fish, and sea urchins: being a research on primitive nervous systems. K. Paul, Trench & Company

    Google Scholar 

  • Rozwadowski HM (2002) The sea knows no boundaries: a century of marine science under ICES. International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, Copenhagen

    Google Scholar 

  • Rozwadowski HM (2005) Fathoming the ocean. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rozwadowski HM (2010) Oceans: fusing the history of science and technology with environmental history. In: Sackman DC (ed) A companion to American environmental history. Wiley, pp 442–461

    Google Scholar 

  • Rozwadowski HM (2014) Introduction. Isis 105(2):335–337

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rozwadowski HM, Van Keuren DK (eds) (2004) The machine in Neptune’s garden: historical perspectives on technology and the marine environment. Watson Pub International

    Google Scholar 

  • Salvador RB, Tomotani BM (2014) The kraken: when myth encounters science. História, Ciências, Saúde 21(3):971–994

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwach V (2002) Internationalist and Norwegian at the same time: Johan Hjort and ICES. In: ICES marine science symposia, vol 215, pp 39‑44

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwach V (2012) The sea around Norway: science, resource management, and environmental concerns, 1860–1970. Environ Hist 18(1):101–110

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwach V (2014) A sea change: Johan Hjort and the natural fluctuations in the fish stocks. ICES J Mar Sci 71(8):1993–1999

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwach V, Hubbard J (2009) Johan Hjort and the birth of fisheries biology: the construction and transfer of knowledge, approaches and attitudes, Norway and Canada, 1890–1920. Stud Atl 13:22–41

    Google Scholar 

  • Secord A (2011) Pressed into service: specimens, space, and seeing in botanical practice. In: Livingstone DN, Withers CWJ (eds) Geographies of nineteenth-century science. University of Chicago Press, pp 283–310

    Google Scholar 

  • Shell HR (2005) Things under water: Etienne-Jules Marey’s aquarium laboratory and cinema’s assembly. In: Weibel P, Latour B (eds) Making things public. MIT Press, pp 326–332

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith TD (1994) Scaling fisheries: the science of measuring the effects of fishing, 1855–1955. Cambridge University Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Sponsel A (2016) An amphibious being: how maritime surveying reshaped Darwin’s approach to natural history. Isis 107(2):254–281

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sponsel A (2018) Darwin’s evolving identity: adventure, ambition, and the sin of speculation. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Stephens LD, Calder DR (2006) Seafaring scientist: Alfred Goldsborough mayor, pioneer in marine biology. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia

    Google Scholar 

  • Stott R (2003) Darwin and the barnacle. W.W. Norton & Company, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor JE III (2009) Making salmon: an environmental history of the northwest fisheries crisis. University of Washington Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Terayama H (1979) The Misaki marine biological station. Int Soc Dev Biols Newslett:3–4

    Google Scholar 

  • The Cove directed by Louie Psihoyos Hollywood, CA: Fisher Stevens, 2009

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson MJ (2016) Governing the shark: predators and people in the twentieth century and beyond. PhD diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    Google Scholar 

  • Tonn JA (2015) Museum, laboratory, and field site: graduate training in zoology at Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, 1873–1934. PhD dissertation, Harvard University

    Google Scholar 

  • Tonn JA (2018) Laboratory of domesticity: gender, race, and science at the Bermuda Biological Station of research, 1903–1930. Hist Sci (Online First)

    Google Scholar 

  • Vermeulen N (2013) From Darwin to the census of marine life: marine biology as big science. PLoS One 8(1):e54284

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Wessely C (2013) Wässrige milieus. Ökologische Perspektiven in Meeresbiologie und Aquarienkunde um 1900. Ber Wiss 36(2):128–147

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wille R-J (2017) Stations and statistics: Paulus Hoek and the transnational discipline of ocean biology. In: Anderson K, Rozwadowski H (eds) Soundings and crossings: doing science at sea, 1800–1970. Watson Publishing

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolfe DA (2001) A history of the federal laboratory at Beaufort, North Carolina 1899–1999. U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Washington, D.C.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Samantha Muka .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Muka, S. (2021). Historiography of Marine Biology. In: Dietrich, M.R., Borrello, M.E., Harman, O. (eds) Handbook of the Historiography of Biology. Historiographies of Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90119-0_24

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics