海洋学是研究海洋和海洋生物的科学,自1850年左右才开始发展,是相当新的科学。从前,水手和渔民虽然对大海十分熟悉,但研究大海的人却非常少,因为他们没有进行深海研究所需的设备。古希腊人对世间万物都感兴趣,他们想知道:海水为什么是咸的?是什么引起潮汐?然而古代旅行家却只把海洋视为抵达其他陆地的通道——便捷却危险的通道。除非不得已,没有人会远离陆地航行。十七世纪东,科学革命开始横扫欧洲,人们开始以科学方法研究自然,因此创立了近代的物理学、化学和生物学,对海洋的研究和探察也随之兴起。然而除了浅海以外,海底探察仍然极为困难。 Oceanography is a science that studies the oceans and marine life. It started to develop only around 1850 and is quite new science. While sailors and fishermen were formerly familiar with the sea, there were very few people studying the sea because they did not have the equipment needed to conduct deep sea research. The ancient Greeks were interested in everything in the world, and they wondered why saltwater was salty, what caused the tides, but ancient travelers viewed the oceans only as a route to other lands - a convenient but dangerous passageway. No one will be sailing away from the land unless it is a last resort. In the 17th century, when the scientific revolution began to sweep Europe and people started to study nature in a scientific way, the modern physics, chemistry and biology were founded and so did the research and exploration of the oceans. However, apart from the shallow sea, underwater exploration is still extremely difficult.