Introduction to the shelf seas - Introduction to the Physical and Biological Oceanography of Shelf Seas - page 7

established in 1881, while in the UK, the Scottish Fisheries Board was given a
research mandate in 1882 and many other countries established similar bodies to
promote the study of marine science related to fisheries. Concerns about the impact of
over-fishing were expressed at the International Fisheries Exhibition held in London
in 1883 but were not shared by all. It was at that meeting that T. H. Huxley, one of the
most eminent scientists of the day, famously discounted reports of scarcity of fish and
asserted that

any tendency to over-fishing will meet with its natural check in the diminution of supply, this

check will come into operation long before anything like permanent exhaustion has occurred.

...

In hindsight, such reliance on the ability of the natural system to be able to resist
the increasing pressures of industrial fishing appears naı¨ ve and unfounded. Fortu-
nately such over-optimistic views, although influential at the time, did not deter
governments from investing in fisheries research. In 1902, the national fisheries
science organisations joined forces to establish the International Council for the
Exploration of the Sea, ICES, to promote the study of the oceans in relation to
fisheries. Scientific progress in relation to process understanding, however, remained
limited as much of the fisheries research effort was concentrated on the practical
problems of understanding the life cycles of commercial species and making stock
assessments.
Nevertheless, important surveys of the physical properties and plankton distribu-
tions were accomplished through fisheries research. For instance, in the UK the early
twentieth century saw work aimed at mapping the temperature and salinity distribu-
tions in shelf waters in an effort to understand fish stock distribution. At the Marine
Biological Association in Plymouth, the first complete study of the seasonal changes
in the physics, chemistry and plankton of a coastal water column was carried out
in the late 1920s and early 1930s (Harvey et al., 1935 ), and in an extensive series of
cruises, Matthews ( 1913 ) documented the annual cycle of temperature, salinity and
density variations over a large section of the north-west European shelf (the Celtic
and Irish Seas). In the United States, similar pioneering studies of a large shelf sea
area on the east coast, the Gulf of Maine, were undertaken by Henry Bigelow
( Fig. 1.3 ). During the period 1912-1928, Bigelow studied the Gulf extensively and
published three monographs on the physical oceanography, plankton and fishes.
Bigelow was a strong advocate of an interdisciplinary approach to the then emerging
science of oceanography and realised the need to move on from fact collecting to
process understanding. In arguing the case for a new Oceanographic Laboratory
(to be the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) he wrote:

what is really interesting in sea science is the fitting of the facts together ... the time is ripe for
a systematic attempt to lift the veil that obscures any real understanding of the cycle of events
that takes place in the sea. It is this new point of view that is responsible for our new
oceanographic institution.

This progression from fact collecting and mapping of the shelf seas to the testing of
theories about the processes controlling the physical environment and the response