GeoJournal 47: 511–522, 1999. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Ocean geography for ocean science Adalberto Vallega Vice-president of the International Geographical Union, University of Genoa, Department Polis, Stradone S. Agostino 37, 16123 Genoa, Italy (E-mail: [email protected]; http://www.polis.unige.it/igu-vallega) Received 11 June 1998; accepted in revised form 13 December 1998

Key words: history of science, oceanography, ocean geography, ocean management, modern and post-modern ocean

Abstract The expanding needs for ocean resources, together with the design and diffusion of new kinds of deep-ocean and coastal management patterns, have changed profoundly in the transition from modern to post-modern society. As a result, the scientific approach to the ocean has also undergone profound changes, which have marked the epistemology of disciplines, their logical backgrounds and methods. This process has been driven by oceanography, which was born in the 19th century and has benefited, first, from the monitoring techniques from surface ships, then from the exploration of the water column and seabed, and finally from the satellite monitoring systems. While that process was evolving, geography has been involved in investigations of marine and coastal uses and the interaction between human communities and the ocean. Since the mid1980s, and especially because of the inputs of Agenda 21 (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, UNCED, 1992), oceanography has been required to deal also with deep-ocean and coastal management issues. To respond to this need, interaction of oceanography with other disciplines is essential. In this prospect geography has an important role because, on the basis of its heritage, it could contribute to (i) the epistemological discussion of the building up of ocean science, (ii) the analysis of the human communities/ocean ecosystems interaction, and (iii) the design of sustainable development-consistent management patterns. The conceptual background and external epistemology needed by ocean geography to optimise this role are presented and discussed.

Introduction Two intersecting inputs have characterised the birth of postmodern society and are expected to influence its evolution during the 21st century. The first input is concerned with thought. The international research programmes on global change have disseminated the perception of the Earth as an ecosystem moving along a non-linear pathway, undergoing changes and basing its organisation on close interactions between physical, chemical and biological processes. This view, if associated with that of the society evolving along a stagebased pathway, leads us to designing holistic and global change-concerned approaches conflicting with conventional determinist views. As will be discussed later, this implies conceiving reality as a complex system. The second input is concerned with politics. The theoretical construction (1980s) and the adoption (1990s) of sustainable development by the international community (The World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) as a goal to be pursued to protect the Earth’s ecosystem, to implement economic efficiency and to guarantee social equity (Young 1992) was one of the watersheds between modern and post-modern societies. These two inputs (global change and sustainable development) have been linked by a circular relation. The more

sustainable development gains justification, the more the demand for global change investigations increases; the more global change investigations increase and provide knowledge, the more social perception of the need for sustainable development strengthens and diffuses. Within this unprecedented framework the ocean has acquired growing importance. Two reasons, among others, have been pre-eminent: the more the knowledge of the Earth’s ecosystem progresses, the more the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean is ascertained as a core component of global change; meanwhile, living and non-living resources of the ocean are regarded as a heritage for present and future generations. These circumstances, together with the technological progress in exploring and inhabiting the ocean, and using it as a space for fibre optic cables and other high tech communication systems, make it evident that, in the short term, the ocean will become a main component of social life for many parts of the world. As a result of these processes, the disciplines concerned with the ocean are expected to play an essential role. This view leads to discussion of how ocean sciences have evolved and to focusing on how they could be usefully re-shaped to optimise their response to the need for (i) research on ocean change in global change, and (ii) management pat-

512 terns aimed at implementing sustainable development of the oceans. This approach highlights geography, for at least two reasons. First, due to its epistemological nature, geography has always had a bridging role between natural and social sciences. Secondly, geography was one of the first disciplines to carry out investigations on the role of human communities in the ocean world. To contribute to this discussion in the following sections: (i) a stage-based view of ocean sciences will be presented; (ii) the position of these sciences vis-à-vis global change and sustainable development will be discussed; (iii) a design of ocean science as proposed in the mid 1980s by oceanographers will be considered and its possible implementation will be discussed; (iv) the possible role of geography will be proposed based on epistemology of complexity.

A historical model The core component of ocean science is oceanography. The birth of this discipline was a main output of the Industrial Revolution first because oceanography was required to provide assessment of the ocean world for the industrial and mercantile bourgeoisie, and secondly because industrial organisation, being characterised by the accelerated creation of techniques, was able to support oceanography with instruments to explore and assess the water column and seabed. As a result, a feedback mechanism involving technological progress, economic and social organisation, and progress in oceanography arose and has strengthened. To perceive how this process has succeeded in implementing the interaction between science and society, a historical stage-based model may be useful. The starting point for its design is the profound change that took place in social and spatial organisation during the 1970s. There is consensus in ascertaining that a turnaround phase arose provoking the eclipse of modern society and the rise of the post-modern one (Harvey, 1990). According to this model, from the late 19th century to the early 20th century modern society was involved in changes influencing social life and territorial organisation to the point of giving shape to two distinct phases (Geddes, 1915; Mumford, 1934; Vallega, 1992, 1997). These have been called palaeo- and the neo-industrial but, more correctly, they may be regarded as the take off and maturity phases of modern society. Changes in social organisation including the use of the ecosystem’s resources have been intimately associated with those in the general paradigms supporting science which have influenced the scientific context including oceanography and geography. The framework resulting from the social and paradigmatic changes is presented in Table 1.

Table 1. A stage-based model of modern and post-modern societies Societies

Phases

Duration

Scientific paradigm

Modern

take off

1760–1880

rational mechanics

maturity

1880–1970

thermodynamics, structuralism

take-off

1970–1990

maturity

1990 and beyond

general system, complexity complexity

Post-modern

The rising modern society: the role of oceanography Knowledge accumulated through the great age of explorations was the heritage from which modern society, born out of the Industrial Revolution, was able to produce the first ocean ecumene. It triggered off a process, which more and more rapidly led the ocean to serve as an essential component of the world. This stage started in the late 18th century, when the handicraft organisation evolved to the point of generating the factory. The consequences that technological innovation in association with political and economic strategies brought about in the ocean world materialised later on. In truth, the birth of the modern ocean era may be placed in 1838, when the Sirius and Great Western, the first iron-built and steampropelled vessels, crossed the Atlantic Ocean and berthed at New York. These vessels, designed in a social milieu marked profoundly by positivism and rational mechanics-inspired thought, generated an unprecedented advance in efforts to release the ship from the natural environment and to master deep-sea routes. Productivity, which was strongly operated in manufacturing activities, was socially perceived as the main concern of maritime transportation. Meanwhile, the iron hull and steam propulsion also became the foundation of naval power aimed basically at protecting merchant routes and shielding colonial conquests. During that phase the Atlantic Ocean became the geographical core of modern society. The route linking the European to the North American seaports between the Gulf of Maine and Chesapeake Bay served as the oceanic umbilical cord of the regions dominating maritime trade. Within that geopolitical framework the ocean ecumene was widened: ocean exploration continued, especially in polar seas where the search for the North West Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific was the symbol of that spirit. But the search for a more functional mercantile route network to consolidate political power in the Indian Ocean and western Pacific was much more impressive. The opening of the Suez Canal (1869) was not only a technologically great enterprise but also a successful effort to use the ocean for modern society’s world-wide strategies. The official act through which that planetary view of ocean’s role took place was in 1845, when the Royal Geographical Society in London initiated the nomenclature of the oceans and seas. That work was basically aimed at

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Figure 1. The general framework of national maritime jurisdictional zones. Basically, the (jurisdictional) continental shelf may be extended up to the outer edge of the (physical) continental shelf or up to 200 nm from the baselines. The exclusive fishery zones may be extended up to 200 nm from the baselines.

standardising atlases and creating an integrated basis for navigation, maritime trade and other ocean affairs. Meanwhile, it was also one of the most significant manifestations of political power since it ratified the domination of Great Britain and the other major maritime powers over the oceans. The organisation of the ocean ecumene reflected the state of the world, consisting of a few dominating countries, led by Great Britain, and widespread subdued territories, most of them with the status of colony. The North Atlantic, with its impressive track of the 40◦–45◦ N merchant routes, was the key ocean space of the leading countries, while other oceans and seas, including those where great civilisations had developed up to that time, had the marginal role of subject ocean spaces. They were functional to the development of the Atlantic. Until the Industrial Revolution the scientific approach to the ocean was geographical in its nature and consisted of describing the sea surface and winds, including currents, and drawing navigation charts. During the take off of modern society (1760–1880) cartography made substantial progress and was systematically practised, inter alia benefiting from the nomenclature of the oceans and seas and their correlated accurate delimitation, as well as from the methodology of determining the geographical co-ordinates. Moreover, oceanography was born and began to carry out investigations into the marine environment. Its date of birth could be placed in 1807, when Thomas Jefferson ordered the creation of the US Coast Survey with the responsibility for hydrographic and geodetic investigations, studies of

tides and preparation of charts. The second step was in 1842, when the US Navy undertook expansive oceanographic operations through its charts and instruments offices. In 1847 Maury drew the first wind and current charts for the North Atlantic and in 1854 he issued the first depth map to 4000 fathoms (7300 metres). One year later, his Physical Geography of the Sea was the first oceanographic textbook. The need to assess the water column and seabed–the former relevant to fisheries and the latter to the laying of telegraph cables–was perceived as increasingly important. Many scientists took soundings in various marine areas stimulating the interest in systematic world-wide investigations. Seabed features were investigated, described and named. That development reached its peak in 1872 when the Challenger sailed on a five year 70 000-mile voyage. That enterprise was the celebration of faith in science and experimental research, both inherited from the Enlightenment and supported by positivism, viz. the initial cultural background of modern society. As a result, by the mid-19th century a bifurcation was completed. The physical geography of the ocean, i.e. oceanography, appeared as clearly designed, well motivated and closely consistent with the political need to master the ocean. Ocean cartography acquired increasing scientific justification being supported by surveys and bathymetric measures provided by oceanography. Geographical approach, not being based on experimental methodologies and essentially consisting of conventional descriptions of seas, was increasingly assimilated to a literary exercise not essential

514 to scientific improvement. As regards the extra-geographical arenas, the growing interest in the law of the sea should be emphasised. The reason was essentially political: the main powers needed to set up legal frameworks based on the principle of mare liberum by Hugo Grotius (1609) to develop strategies aimed at establishing and consolidating colonies.

The maturing modern society: science facing the growth of ocean uses Modern society entered its maturity phase in the 1880s and reached its peak after World War II. The United States had by then assumed the role of core country. The leading area also included Great Britain, Western Europe and Japan and somewhat, after 1917, the Soviet Union. The developing world formed the subdued area of the stage. The rest of the world was limited to the Antarctic and some equatorial land and island areas. In that historical context the North Atlantic continued to play the role of the core ocean of the stage, but in the 1960’s the North Pacific began to acquire increasing importance. That maturity phase was triggered by numerous converging inputs, most due to changes in the social division of labour, which entered with the revolutionary era of Taylorism, as well as technological progress, inter alia thoroughly involving communication tools and techniques, transportation and energy systems. Those processes were associated with changes in the scientific approach and setting of science. According to the historical model designed by Le Moigne (1990) on the paradigmatic evolution of science, modern society was profoundly and for a long time influenced by the thermodynamics paradigm, which led to perceiving reality as an evolving structure generating functions and following irreversible paths. Paradigmatic changes were initiated on the eve of World War II, when important scientific milieux confuted the thermodynamics-supported approach and were instead attracted towards structuralist views, according to which reality is thought of as an evolving structure that, during its evolution, generates functions. During its maturity phase, modern society was able to give strong impetus to techniques and organisational patterns to explore and exploit ocean resources. The conventional coastal and deep-ocean uses technologically improved and diffused while new kinds of use were operated. In this context attention may be concentrated on progress and subsequent epistemological orientations of oceanography, and geographical approaches to ocean uses. Since the late 19th century oceanography had been developing so rapidly and was marked by such profound progress and changes in its internal epistemology as to be regarded as one of the leading sciences of modern society. Three processes characterised its role: (i) the use of improved tools to explore the water column; (ii) the establishment of close links between research and industry; and (iii) the diversification into branches, each provided with its own epistemological statute.

Exploration. The water column and seabed were investigated through indirect techniques, based on sounding systems. In the mid-20th century, when modern society reached its maturity peak, direct investigations were successfully experimented: in 1949, off Dakar, the first bathyscaph, the FNRS2, was submerged; many other vessels with increasing ability to operate within the water column and on the seabed, as well as to carry out sophisticated investigations, followed. During the 1960’s, while modern society was approaching its eclipse phase, the physical and chemical properties of the water column and the morphology of the seabed appeared sufficiently assessed. Meanwhile, efficient technologies to explore the subsoil were about to benefit from initial, intense inputs. Research and ocean uses. Oceanography was subject to impulses leading not only to accumulating ocean assessment per se but also, and more specifically, to meeting the need to develop ocean uses. Fisheries, oil and gas exploration and exploitation, the laying of telephone cables and pipelines, submarine navigation, archaeology and defence were the ocean uses upon which research was required to focus. In the late 1960’s the manganese nodule deposits (some of which were picked up by Challenger, 1872–1876) were discovered, making industrial and financial decision-making centres foresee a possible new era in ocean mining. Internal epistemology: diversification. As investigations advanced and diffused, and technologies were introduced, oceanography underwent an internal epistemological evolution which led to its being subdivided into branches. In the 1960’s physical, chemical and biological oceanography, together with marine geology, were considered as distinct, main sectors, each having its own endowment of concepts and methodologies, and benefiting from both scientific and social justification (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, 1984). There is no doubt that the roots of ocean geography sensitive to the role of human communities can be found in the take off phase of modern society, and even before, but the perception of the need to carry out investigations on the human presence at sea and resource use of the ocean by an ad hoc set of concepts and methods arose through Ratzel’s approach presented in Chapter XIII of Anthropogeografie (1882–1891). As a result, ocean geography, usually called ‘marine geography’, was born as a branch of the newlydesigned human geography. That initial approach consisted of a global view of the relationships between human communities and water environments, including salt waters. It appeared as deeply sensitive to the positivist cultural background: great attention was paid to the physical features of the sea, especially the coastal waters; the interaction between man and the ocean was thought of in terms of cause-effect inputs of the latter to the former. Navigation and settlements in coastal waters were the ocean uses taken into account. Attention was also concentrated on the naming and delimitation of the seas. This was consistent with the profound interest in geopolitics which Ratzel nourished.

515 Vidal de la Blache’s approach (1902), which came to the fore only a few years after Ratzel’s view, gave strong impetus to ocean geography. It was the result of a new concept of the goal and role of geography. Vidalian possibilism was basically far from positivism. Although attention to the natural world was remarkable, that to human elements and processes led to the designing of more extended and attractive investigations than those sustained by the determinist view of the world. Looking at the links between general and geographical paradigms, it is self-evident that possibilism (as a geographical paradigm) was more closely linked to the general paradigm of thermodynamics (reality evolving along not reversible paths) than to that of rational mechanics, which inspired Ratzel’s determinism. Evolution in nature was investigated in association with that of human communities. The human-environment interaction was described through the concept of genre de vie and with reference to landscape. The consequences which ocean geography underwent were remarkable. It is sufficient to recall that, in 1900, Vidal de la Blache and Émile Bourgeois were successful in persuading the French Navy Ministry to include the textbook Géographie générale appliquée à l’étude de la mer – in practical terms, the first course programme of ocean geography–in the curricula of the École Navale of Brest. In his book (Principes de géographie humaine; posthumous, 1922) Vidal de la Blache designed a comprehensive approach to ocean geography. Eleven years later, Camille Vallaux was able to go on by bringing out his Géographie générale des mers. Framing the ocean within the water cycle, which foreshadowed current holistic views, all the oceans were described focusing on both their physical features and resource uses (fisheries, navigation, etc.). In 1961, Max Sorre’s approach was significant in showing how ocean geography evolved and paid increasing attention to human presence at sea. L’Homme sur la Terre (Chapter 3) focused on ‘oceanic circulation’: navigation, maritime transportation, seaports and associated topics were investigated. Some years after, that approach was methodologically deepened by André Vigarié (1968) leading to a comprehensive view of the evolution of the human circulation in the ocean. The Vidalian-inspired French school, as it has improved its approach to ocean geography by the setting up of sophisticated conceptual and methodological frameworks, has become less influenced by the thermodynamics-based general paradigm and increasingly sensitive to the theoretical inputs deriving from structuralism. A well designed functionalist geographical approach, influenced by structuralism, came to the fore in the 1970s within the Department of Maritime Studies (Cardiff, UK), mainly as a result of the efforts by Alastair D. Couper (1983) to provide multidisciplinaryoriented and multi-sectoral views of the ocean and its uses. The model of that approach, which appeared as a model of how ocean management was perceived at that time, was presented in the early 1980s. It consisted of a square matrix clustering the ocean uses and their reciprocal relationships. It was the starting point of a research route, along which ocean geography has tried to introduce and implement holistic views of ocean and coastal management.

Ocean sciences in post-modern society In the early 1970s a group of influential events and processes brought about the collapse of modern society and the birth of a new social and economic organisation. Post-modern society underwent its triggering process and take off during the 1970s and 1980s. Sensu lato, it lasted from the UN Conference on the Human Environment (1972), which led to internalising the environmental variables in the economic equations, to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, 1992), which claimed sustainable development as the political goal to be pursued on any scale in all the components of the Earth’s ecosystem, including the ocean. In the 1990s the convergence of the end of the Cold War and the creation of world information networks as a result of the globalisation process, generated the leading features of the post-modern world. In this change phase the ocean had a key role. A sequence of international events and the design of basic legal and political frameworks exerted substantial influence: 1972, the claim of the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) by the United States bringing about profound inputs on coastal policy in many countries (Walker 1990); 1974, the launching of the Regional Seas Programme by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); 1982, the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UN LOS Convention); 1992, the adoption of Agenda 21 by UNCED, including principles and guidelines for sustainable development of international and national waters, coastal areas and small islands (Chapter 17); 1994, the entering into force of the UN LOS Convention. As a result of these main events and relevant materials, in the 1990s, when post-modern society entered its maturity, ocean management was well designed. Based on holistic views of ocean uses and their implications for the ocean ecosystem, it has included, as main components: (i) coastal area management, (ii) deep-ocean management, and (iii) the management of regional seas. Where attention is concentrated on oceanography and, sensu lato, on ocean sciences, there is no doubt that the UN Conference on the Human Environment (1972) was the birth of the post-modern arena, and that the UN Conference on Environment and Development (1992) had basic relevance. The former event induced oceanography to concentrate on the environmental degradation, essentially on the pollution cycles; the latter led oceanography to focus on the ocean ecosystem as a whole. As a consequence, on the one hand oceanography has acquired a more defined internal subdivision embracing the consolidated branches, e.g. physical and chemical oceanography, and emerging branches, e.g. marine geology and marine ecology. On the other hand, it has been stimulated to establish co-operation with other physical disciplines, and recently also with some ocean sciences. Following long and intense discussions and thanks to satellite data, during the take off of post-modern society (1970s to early 1990s), the theory of plate tectonics was enunciated. Inter alia, the investigations carried out to test the validity of the theory led to discovering the enormous mineral resources of the deep-ocean seabeds to the point of

516 foreseeing the birth of deep-sea mining in a short term. The UN Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS, 1973– 1982) was basically motivated by scenarios drawing on the era of extended deep seabed exploitation. In truth, the key importance of the plate tectonics theory was due to the fact that, for the first time, a global approach to the physical and chemical processes of the ocean was provided, together with the construction of a global model simulating the long-term evolution of the ocean. The search for global models has been stimulated mainly as a consequence of the research programmes convened by the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) to carry out investigations on the Earth’s system moving from climate change. As a result, an ample research framework has taken shape, where the interaction between the near atmosphere and the ocean has been regarded as the basis from which to move also to understand the change of the ecosystem (IGBP, 1992). In that context, a wide spectrum of potential involvement of geography was opened (Mather and Sdasyuk, 1990; Manshard, 1993). Meanwhile, the expansion of ocean uses was put on the agenda of research in order to explore how the increasing and diffusing human pressure would have contributed to accelerate ocean change. As regards the technological endowment of ocean sciences, post-modern society has been marked by the use of satellites for ocean investigations and the development of ocean monitoring systems for many purposes, from environmental protection to resource uses and the protection of human life at sea. This approach led to designing the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), a satellite system able to provide a wide spectrum of information about the ocean as a whole (Woods, 1994). In this framework, the geographical approach to the ocean, and the subsequent actual and potential links which have solidified between geography and oceanography – as well as other ocean sciences, e.g. the law of the sea – have been characterised by five main components. (i) Coastal morphology. Many physical geographers have been involved in investigations of case studies concerned with coastal erosion and, sensu lato, coastal geomorphology. Such an intense activity has been basically carried out in the context of the International Geographical Union (IGU), Commission on Coastal Systems, and recently has been influenced by the propensity to investigate the interaction between physical processes and human pressure also with the aim of contributing to coastal area management programmes. (ii) Geographical impacts of sea-level rise. As the nature of global patterns of climate change has progressed, a special branch of geographical investigations has taken shape focusing on the interaction between sea-level rise and associated physical and chemical processes, on the one hand, and coastal resource uses, coastal settlements and man-made facilities, on the other (Walker, 1992; Leaterman and Nicholls, 1995). (iii) Geography of ocean uses. The three conventional main uses investigated by human geography were (a) seaports, (b) navigation and transportation, and (c) living resource

exploitation. From the 1980s the propensity to widen the spectrum of ocean uses has increased and efforts to provide global views of coastal and deep-ocean uses have strengthened and diffused. They are expected to lead to the building up of models of ocean use structures tailored to management programmes (Smith, 1992; Vallega, 1992). (iv) The geographical implications of the law of the sea. The UN LOS has stimulated geographical investigations on the spatial implications of (a) the establishment of national maritime jurisdictional zones, (b) the re-design of the legal status of the high seas, and (c) the design of the regime of deep seabeds (Prescott, 1985, 1992). (v) The regional scale of the ocean. Geography has been encouraged to carry out investigations of the existing programmes aimed at managing the ocean on the regional scale and setting up methods to regionalise the ocean. The former subject area has embraced research on the seas included in the UNEP Regional Seas Programmes, as well as other seas involved by national and multi-national programmes (Vallega, 1994). The latter area has coped with conceptual studies on how ocean regionalisation might be intended and be set up, to provide holistic approaches to the individual ocean regional spaces (Alexander, 1986, 1989). Most geographical research routes have taken place in the context of the International Geographical Union (IGU). Since the 1970s this role has been played by a Commission on Coastal Areas; since the 1980s that body has been flanked by the Commission on Marine Geography; in 1996 the programme Oceans was adopted by IGU to integrate the activity of all the research bodies involved in the ocean and to optimise the response from geographers to the demand for research on the programme areas designed by UNCED Agenda 21. In 1998 the IGU Oceans programme was converted into a wider and more ambitious programme, called Oceans 21 and convened by the International Geographical Union and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO. Towards ocean science: the 1980s approach In 1984 the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO presented a wide ranging report, Ocean Science for the Year 2000, on an inquiry among oceanographers carried out with the aim of identifying the newly-born demand for research on various scales and the subsequent need to re-design a consistent scientific approach. Currently, that report may be regarded as the design of ocean disciplines from the point of view of oceanography. Two motivations justified such an approach: a scientific motivation, due to the need to conform oceanographic research to the concept of global change and to convene relevant international programmes; a social motivation, due to the need to conduct investigations tailored to environmentally-sound policies. Both motivations brought to the fore an epistemological concern, consisting of the prospect of re-thinking the objectives and the internal setting of oceanography and, contextually, that of re-defining the relationships between oceanography and other sciences (Kullenberg, 1995).

517 “Scientific problems in the ocean – stated the introduction of the IOC report (1984) – tend to involve more than one discipline, so that their solution often calls for collaboration among scientists with different experience and skills. And because of the large dimensions of many oceanic processes and the fact that their occurrence and location are seldom coincident with the limits of national jurisdiction, marine science depends heavily on co-operation among countries.” According to the report, the leading inputs of society have consisted of the evolution of the law of the sea regarding both international and national waters, the expansion of deep-ocean and coastal uses, climate change and impacts on social organisation, and the need to optimise seafood production. To deal with these inputs the following avenues were sketched: (i) the range of subject areas to be investigated by the individual branches of oceanography was widened; (ii) the time scale was more accurately defined with the aim of carrying out effective investigations on both the long and short run; (iii) the geographical scales as including the global, regional (multi-national) and local scales, were thought of as necessary; (iv) more effective integration between time and spatial scales, as well as integration between the branches of oceanography, were regarded as unavoidable tasks. The associated involvement of two or more oceanographic branches to deal with the demand for knowledge on the ocean arising from social needs was presented as in Table 2. The IOC approach has acquired some characteristics which are worth considering in the light of the changes in both scientific organisation and social needs: (i) only the internal epistemology of oceanography was taken into account. The extra-oceanography disciplines, mainly the law of the sea, were not regarded as disciplinary arenas with which to interact. Consequently, the external epistemology was not tackled; (ii) oceanography, consisting of the four branches presented in Table 2, was claimed as ocean science. That operation was rich in a strategic sense: (a) vis-à-vis the scientific community, oceanography was presented as the sole, or at least as the leading discipline able to provide holistic views of the ocean; (b) vis-à-vis the decision making systems, oceanography was presented as embracing all the scientific ability to meet social needs; (iii) inter-disciplinarity was intended only as a concern of assembling disciplines, and thereby the relevant epistemological and methodological concerns were left in the background. The question was only how many disciplines would have to be put under the umbrella of ocean science according to the extension of subject areas of oceanography; (iv) the background supporting that relevant approach was basically positivist, and the approach has led to imagining the science as consisting of disciplines providing sectoral views. According to positivism and structuralism, disciplines may be associated but not effectively integrated.

Ocean geography in a new perspective At least three inputs lead us to search for implementing, and thereby for transcending this approach. First, global changeconcerned investigations have intensively progressed and, so doing, they have emphasised the need to provide global views of the ocean, where also extra-oceanographic disciplines, including geography (Vallega, 1990), are supposed to be involved. This implies designing patterns of co-operation between physical, biological and social sciences, which is unanimously regarded as a crucial issue. Secondly, the adoption of the sustainable development concept has brought about not only the need to deal with the development of individual uses but also that of setting up integrated management patterns, mainly in coastal seas, coastal areas, small islands and archipelagoes. Finally, recently epistemology has improved to the point of strongly contributing to the discussion of integration between disciplines. The epistemological inputs were the most influential. They have arisen from the theory of complexity, main expression of the so-called constructivist epistemologies, according to which reality consists of complex systems, to be assessed through conjunctive logic and inductive-axiomatic methodology, while the scientific approach is thought of as consisting of the building up of epistemes, namely, systems of knowledge transcending the conventional sectoral views. Hence the coexistence, characteristic of intense scientific debate, of two conflicting scientific backgrounds: the positivism (rooted on natural sciences) and structuralism (social sciences), both based on a disjunctive, Cartesian logic, versus the complexity theory, based on a conjunctive logic, expressed by principles antipodal to those by Descartes.

The new role of geography Were the constructivist view to be adopted, ocean geography, dealing with the geographical knowledge of the ocean, would serve as one of the ocean key disciplines. This approach could be regarded as the final step of a long and intense evolution which has passed through three stages: The determinism stage. According to Friedrich Ratzel’s conceptual background (Anthropogeografie, 1882–1991, Chapter 13), marine geography was intended as the ‘general geography of the sea’, including the description of the main physical features of the ocean, the discussion of the influences from the sea on human communities, and the description of navigation and relevant political and cultural consequences. The general paradigm was rational mechanics and the geographical paradigm was determinism. The possibilism stage. Vidalian thought gave strong impetus to the designing of marine geography as a knowledge area far removed from the determinist view of the ocean. Following Vallaux (1933), marine geography was thought of as consisting of two components:

518 Figure 2. The extents of the (physical) continental shelf and margin, and the 200 nm isodistance line from the baselines showing the most seaward extended boundary of the national jurisdictional maritime spaces. Adapted from J.V.R. Prescott (19875, p. 18).

519 Table 2. Use of the oceans and the relevance of the research disciplines Social needs

Oceanographic disciplines Physics Biology Chemistry

Geology

Food from the sea: shelf and open ocean fisheries, marine culture

✪

★

✪

✪

Energy: power from water movements, hydrocarbons

★

✪

✪

★

Minerals: nodules, polymetallic sulphides, constituents of sea water, fresh water

✪

✪

★

★

Drugs from marine organisms and from sea water

❍

★

✪

❍

Environmental quality: pollution, recreation Transportation: shipping, harbours, cables, pipelines

✪ ★

★ ✪

★ ✪

✪ ✪

Forecasts of oceanographic and meteorological phenomena

★

❍

✪

✪

Structures and instruments in the sea, shore protection

★

✪

✪

✪

❍ no relevance. ✪ low relevance. ★ high relevance

(i) general marine geography, including exhaustivenessinspired descriptions of the physical and biological features of the ocean, as well as the description of the history of human involvement in the ocean, and that of the main ocean uses (navigation and transportation, fisheries); (ii) regional marine geography, describing the individual oceans and seas. The general paradigm was thermodynamics but – as has been mentioned – influences from structuralism were felt, so the geographical paradigm, expressed by possibilism, resulted as a complex framework. The structuralism stage. The structuralist approach, closely concerned with geographical functionalism, kept the view of marine geography as consisting of general and regional geography. The description of physical and biological features of the ocean was complemented by a comprehensive view of ocean uses, including their historical evolution. Attention was given to newly-born and emerging uses, such as communication, archaeology, offshore oil and gas exploration and exploitation, and ocean mining. The complexity-based approach. The constructivist geographical approach incorporates the assessment provided by the functionalist approach, especially the view of ocean uses, but transcends it by: (i) adopting the idea of the complex system as the scientific general paradigm; (ii) assuming sustainable development as the final goal of ocean management, viz. as the political paradigm; (iii) framing its knowledge into that of ocean science. The set of assumptions, on which ocean geography would be based, is presented in Table 3. As a consequence, ocean geography can be imagined as a four-coordinate epistemological matrix based on: (i) the

subject areas, identified in accordance with the objective of knowledge; (ii) the geographical areas, to which the subject areas are referred; (iii) the spatial scales, on which research is conducted; and (iv) the time scale, to which the processes are referred. Since knowledge for the pursuance of sustainable management has been assumed as the basic goal of research by the scientific community, the aforementioned breakdown transcends the conventional separate role of the physical approach (oceanography) and the social approach (marine geography). Knowledge of natural and social processes is viewed as being provided in an integrated way. Integration requires isomorphisms, that is concepts and principles supporting all the disciplines and research fields concerned. The setting up of isomorphisms should be a main component of the epistemological statute of ocean geography. Inter alia, isomorphisms could contribute to create a multi-disciplinary and multi-topical language in such a way as to overcome the current Babel, which has characterised marine geography as well as other ocean disciplines. If conceived in these terms, ocean geography appears as a discipline able to deal with the ocean successfully and to achieve integration with other ocean disciplines. Furthermore, by force of its long epistemological evolution, ocean geography would be in a position to play an important role in the framework of disciplines concerned with ocean investigations. To have a preliminary idea of how this role could be played, attention has to be centred on the geographical components of the ocean, to which the four large modules of which ocean geography consists may be referred, viz.: (i) coastal geography; (ii) deep-ocean geography; (iii) regional geography; and (iv) ocean geographical information systems.

520 Table 3. Statements of the complexity-based paradigm of ocean geography Basic statements

Objectives of ocean geography

The ocean is a bi-modular system consisting of the ecosystem and the social system.

To regard the relationships between the ecosystem and the social system as feedbacks evolving over time.

The ocean system evolves through adjustment and change phases.

To assume ocean change as a subject area of primary interest.

The ocean ecosystem is a non-trivial machine.

To consider the ocean ecosystem as selfpoietic, i.e. as able to generate different outputs vis-`a-vis the same input.

The target to which the ocean system moves is the result of the interaction between natural and social processes.

To focus on the interaction between the natural ocean change and social change.

The target is the projection over time of the objective pursued by the system.

To identify the objective that the human community intends to pursue through ocean exploitation and use development.

The target to which the ocean system moves is influenced by the ethical values that mankind attributes to the role of the ocean.

To explore the geographical implications of the ethical backgrounds sustaining ocean policies and management.

The protection of biodiversity, resilience and productivity of the ocean ecosystem is the highest ethical value of our times.

To focus on the implications of resource use development and social behaviour on biodiversity and other basic properties of the ocean ecosystem.

As the involvement of the ocean in political frameworks and management patterns evolves, the ocean is regarded as complex reality.

To represent the ocean through models consistent with the model-building theory of the complexity-based epistemology.

As ocean management progresses the ocean undergoes regionalisation.

To investigate ocean regionalisation and to build up relevant models.

The basic spatial components of the ocean are the continental margin and the deepocean since they differ in terms of genetic factors, the ecosystem’s features, and are affected by different impacts from human communities.

To focus on the continental margin and the deep-ocean as two subsystems of the ocean system.

Coastal geography. This module is concerned with investigations of the coastal area, on which an extended literature has concentrated recently. Considering the conceptual implications of integrated coastal management (Cicin-Sain, 1993; Vallega, 1993; Van der Weide, 1993), the approach designed by UNCED Agenda 21 and the efforts of numerous states (Sorensen, 1997), it should be agreed that, from the geographical point of view, the coastal area may be intended as extending seawards up to the outer edge of the continental margin. If the jurisdictional framework is taken into account, this area may be considered as extending up to the outer limit of the widest national maritime jurisdictional zone, i.e. the exclusive economic zone (EEZ), where established. As a result, coastal geography is concerned with a three-dimensional space – land, sea and atmosphere – which extends:

– landwards, up to that distance from the coastline, currently or potentially embracing the space involved by human presence, provided that it is relevant to sustainable coastal management; – seawards, up to the outer edge of the continental margin or, sensu stricto, up to that of the continental shelf (physical delimitation), or else the outer limit of a national jurisdictional zone (territorial sea, continental shelf, exclusive economic zone); – upwards, including the atmospheric layers concerned with chemical and physical processes involving the ocean and land coastal areas. At the present time, the Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone (LOICZ) is the main research project convened in the framework of IGBP (IGBP, 1993 and 1995) on which geographical efforts might concentrate.

521 Deep-ocean geography. This module is concerned with investigations on the ocean water, seabed and subsoil extending beyond the outer edge of the continental margin or, if the legal criterion is adopted, investigations on the high seas and deep seabeds. As a result, deep-ocean geography deals with: (i) the high seas and deep seabeds, from the legal point of view; (ii) the deep-ocean ecosystem, from the natural point of view; and (iii) islands and archipelagoes located within the deep-ocean waters. Ocean regional geography. In this respect investigations focus on two separate subjects (Vallega, 1994): (i) the ocean regions, that is those ocean spaces whose organisation has achieved such complex levels as to motivate the belief that regions exist; and (ii) ocean regionalisation, that is the partition of an ocean space for any purpose (e.g. for research, management, enunciation of legal frameworks). As a result, ocean regional geography is concerned with: (i) enclosed and semi-enclosed seas; (ii) deep-ocean; (iii) bays, gulfs, estuaries; and (iv) islands and archipelagoes. Investigations of the regional seas and, sensu lato, the regional scale of ocean management including the regionalisation of the ocean, call to the fore the geographical theory of regionalisation. At the present time, the UNEP Regional Seas Programme is the main political framework to which geography could critically refer (Jacobson, 1996). Ocean geographical information systems. This is an intersecting module because it is concerned with the coastal area (Kam, Paw and Loo, 1992), deep-ocean and regional seas. It consists of ocean cartography, information systems, multimedia tools and any other expression of the newlyborn communication and computer sciences applied to ocean investigations. In conclusion, ocean geography may be considered as a new frontier of geography. The more it will be able to participate in the debate on the inter-disciplinary approach to the ocean and to respond to management-oriented demand for research, the more it will contribute to designing the global geography of the new century.

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