Documents and Data
The photographic record
The story of marine science development is brought to life by photographs of work at sea, in the many UK laboratories and, most of all, by photographs of the people involved in research.
The Archives of the National Oceanographic Library include a large collection of photographs dating from the Discovery Investigations in the Antarctic to the present day
More recent photographs are having metadata added through a Crowdsourcer initiative and will eventually be added to the searchable archive.
Many photographs are held in people’s personal collections and we encourage those with such holdings to contact the History SIG so that they may be documented and preserved.
Artefacts and documents
Much oceanographic equipment is bulky and heavy and so there has been no systematic means of preserving it. There are notable exceptions of equipment preserved by the Science Museum. These include the GLORIA Mk II vehicle housed at Wroughton near Swindon, the original tide prediction machine by Kelvin, and the storm surge prediction analogue computer made by Ishiguro. Two, much larger tide prediction machines are on display at NOC in Liverpool.
The recent discovery in the University of Manchester of collection of letters by Alan Turing highlights that fact that many important documents may still lie in filing cabinets and boxes. Where are the hidden gems of marine science?
Historical data
A considerable amount of historical data is known to exist, both in the UK and around the world, in paper form (e.g. hand-written tabulations of various parameters, or even paper tape). An activity called ‘data archaeology’, combined with ‘data rescue’, aims to determine how much historical data exist and then to convert their scientific content into modern computer form, so that the data can be analysed by modern methods. Although it is hard to estimate how much of such historical data has already been lost through decay, or having been thrown away, it is clear that efforts must be made to save what we can. This particularly applies to very old information on parameters such as temperatures or sea levels which are known to be changing. Such ‘data archaeology’ has been extremely successful in extending the length of meteorological records, but it requires effort and as full as possible an understanding of the historical contexts within such measurements were made. This is the sort of activity in which contributions from the SIG could be especially valuable, in applying data archaeology to historical oceanographic information, ensuring that as much historical data end up at BODC for all to use.
Latest News
Challenger Society History of Oceanography SIG Webinars
The Challenger Society Special Interest Group on the History of Oceanography will be having a series of zoom webinars in 2025. The talks will be at 5pm UK time on Wednesday evenings (3rd Wed of the month):
Job vacancy
The Ocean Census is actively seeking a Workshop Coordinator to join our dynamic team to manage the workshop and related processes with an international alliance of partners. The deadline for applications is 15th December 2024. Link to further details: https://oceancensus.org/job-opportunity-workshop-coordinator/
Socio-oceanography Workshop sets sights on key climate and ocean challenges
The National Oceanography Centre (NOC) is calling on scientists and researchers to participate in its fourth annual Socio-Oceanography Workshop, hosted in collaboration with the Marine Social Science Network.
This international event, set to take place at NOC’s Southampton site 26-28 February 2025, will gather experts across natural and social sciences to tackle the pressing issues linking people and the changing ocean.
This year’s workshop will focus on four key themes, including the impact of climate change-driven shifts in marine species distribution and how these changes will affect the way the UK marine environment is perceived, valued, and managed.
Other topics include integrating digital humans into environmental digital twins, addressing biases in research related to marine carbon dioxide removal, and exploring how local communities can engage in participatory environmental monitoring.