Conducting Marine Science in the Arctic - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 227

were using (appropriately called Nansen bottles ). On my bookshelves, I have an account
of the 1925-1927 Antarctic Ocean expedition of the research ship Discovery , written by
Sir Alister Hardy. The crew of the Discovery would have recognized perhaps as much as
50% of our gear in 1977. The pace of oceanographic technology development had been
so slow that Nansen and Hardy would have quickly become perfectly competent members
of an oceanographic team in the 1960s and 1970s. However, if oceanographers could ma-
gically be moved from that time to a modern oceanographic vessel, they would be utterly
bemused. The microchip revolution has changed everything. They may indeed find there is
no need to go to sea to do their work!