Reviewing a science book for high-school honors courses

An Enjoyable Introduction
to General Oceanography

H. Gary Greene

This book's content includes a brief history of our understanding of the oceans, discussions of Earth's origin and structure, chapters about the morphology of the ocean basins and the movements of the oceans' waters, and three ecology-oriented chapters on marine life. The final chapter addresses ways in which marine resources have been managed and mismanaged. Each chapter ends with a summary, a list of important terms and concepts, some study questions and a brief annotated bibliography.

Essentials of Oceanography shows many strengths and should be useful as a classroom text for some time to come. Because oceanography is a broad field which spans many scientific disciplines, the author of an introductory textbook has to work hard to keep his writing focused.

Garrison has done this. His historical material (starting with the exploits of some ancient mariners and extending through today's intense exploration of the oceans) is exciting, his treatment of the evolution of the oceans is excellent, and he does a good job of integrating geological, biological, chemical and physical aspects of oceanography.

• Page 47: In figure 3.21, the active trench associated with the New Hebrides Arc is mislocated. It lies to the southwest, not the northeast, of the islands.

• Chapter 3, "Earth Structure and Plate Tectonics," has no explanation of a transform fault. A transform fault usually occurs on a mid-ocean ridge, and it affects the pattern of magnetic striping (a phenomenon described on pages 53 and 54).

• Page 62: The caption for the picture of Shinkai 6500 (a deep-diving submersible) is ambiguous. Shinkai 6500 is operated by the Japanese Marine Science and Technology Center, not Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

• Page 191: Garrison uses the word grit in a casual way, as if it meant any material that is eroded from seaside cliffs and contributes to the nourishment of beaches. As a geological term, grit should be applied only to angular particles derived from sandstone.

• Page 195: The discussion of backwash marks implies that these marks arise when sediments are separated according to their colors. In fact, the sediments are separated according to their densities. The separated fractions may or may not differ in color.

• Page 201: The term "coastal cell" is used in the text but isn't defined, and the definition in the book's glossary is not as informative as it could be. The definition should emphasize that a cell is a region bounded by submarine canyons, and that the canyons conduct sediments to the deep sea.

• Page 224: Here the author asserts that photosynthetic phytoplankton is "critical to all life on Earth." That is not so. Chemosynthetic organisms do not depend on light, as Garrison explains elsewhere in the book. Our knowledge of chemosynthetic organisms, and of the communities they support, is expanding rapidly as we explore the deep sea.

• Page 242: In figure 13.25, a fish is incorrectly identified as a female of Melanocoetus johnsoni, carrying "a permanently attached male." But M. johnsoni does not have parasitic males, and the fish shown in the figure is actually a linophrynid.

• Page 253: The mucilaginous lubricant on the surface of an intertidal plant may deter grazing, but we do not yet know whether it actually does so.

• Page 254: The classification of seaweeds is based partly, not entirely, upon "the presence of colored compounds in their tissues."

• Page 271: The caption for figure 14.17 refers to "A blind tripod fish," but the tripod fish is not blind.

• Pages 272, 273: The discussion of communities based on chemosynthesis should be expanded to include cold-seep communities as well as the hydrothermal-vent communities. Usually, cold seeps are not associated with mid-ocean ridges. They occur at both active and passive tectonic boundaries, and the fluids that they discharge are not much warmer or colder than the surrounding waters.

• Page 279: Here the discussion of natural gas in sediments should be widened to give some attention to clathrates. A clathrate consists of gas locked in a frozen-water lattice. Natural-gas clathrates generally are found where gas-bearing sediments are subjected to high pressure and low temperature.

• Page 305: In discussing environmental activism, the author seems to give conflicting items of advice. He cautions that "Chaining yourself to an oil tanker is not rational," but in the box on the same page he recommends joining Greenpeace, an organization that has taken some extreme and perilous actions.

The marine sciences are at the threshold of a new age. The recent revolutions in biology and geology are being assimilated and the road ahead seems clearer. A renaissance in the design of sampling devices, robot submersible vehicles, and data processing has brought new vigor to oceanography. Satellite-borne sensors can provide data in an instant that would have taken years to collect using surface ships. . . . We can learn much about the world -- and about ourselves -- by looking for the oceanic connections between things. I hope your interest in learning about the ocean has just been kindled.

Tom Garrison's own enthusiasm for oceanography is apparent and contagious, and his textbook -- despite the occasional errors and omissions -- is rich in sound scientific information. I recommend Essentials of Oceanography for use in high-school honors classes and in community colleges.

A Fine Science Book
by a Skillful Teacher

Leighton Taylor

Garrison wrote Essentials of Oceanography for use in community-college classes, but this excellent textbook can serve as a teaching text for use in high-school honors courses too. It will also be valuable to teachers who simply want to freshen their knowledge of marine science.

When I was in high school, decades ago, high schools did not offer courses in oceanography, and only a few colleges took the subject seriously. I took my baccalaureate degree at Occidental College (in Los Angeles), but Occidental didn't start a comprehensive marine-studies program until after I had graduated. Obviously, I was on the wrong side of the wave. That wave has continued to build, especially in the past ten or fifteen years. The number of oceanography courses offered by our American colleges increased by 200% between 1984 and 1994, and the number of faculty members teaching oceanography to undergraduates grew from 1,867 to 3,552, according to CMG Information Services (a company that advises publishers about trends in education).

Today's first-rate high schools should recognize the growing interest in marine studies among young people, and they should consider offering introductory courses to serious students. In this setting, Tom Garrison's book can be a big help.

Garrison's chapter 15, titled "Uses and Abuses of the Ocean," describes some ways in which the seas are related to commerce, human health and other human affairs. It provides excellent reviews of topics as varied as oil spills and petro-economics, water policy, overfishing, chemical pollution, waste disposal, atmospheric changes, the law of the sea, and -- most essentially -- overpopulation. Besides forming an important part of Garrison's survey of oceanography, this chapter can serve as a resource for teachers of other subjects, such as environmental science, geography or social studies.

In reading the chapters about physical oceanography, I made a point of checking Garrison's passages about the Coriolis effect and geostrophic anomalies -- two concepts with which I had some difficulty when I was in grad school. Garrison has done a good job of explaining both. I also like his little tribute to the fun of surfing, presented as a sidebar in his chapter about waves.

I suspect that some of the diagrams in Essentials of Oceanography were originally developed for use in Garrison's classroom. They look like diagrams that would accompany the "chalk talks" of a good teacher.

I could not help noticing an annoying error that obviously was introduced by the publisher. In his first chapter, "History," Garrison reproduces a Portuguese postage stamp, and the caption says correctly that the stamp commemorates Prince Henry the Navigator. But when the same illustration appears in the promotional material at the front of the book -- as an example of the book's "outstanding" artwork -- the person shown on the stamp is said to be Ferdinand Magellan. I suspect that Garrison did not get to check all of the illustrations before the book went to press, and he probably has been chagrined by some of the things that the publisher has done. I can sympathize. Several years ago I wrote a book titled Sharks of Hawaii, which included a carefully prepared list of shark attacks on humans. Not until the book was distributed did I find that my publisher had decided to print the list (and only the list) on a background of red and pink, which suggested rent flesh. This undermined my effort to present information in a sober and objective way.

Essentials of Oceanography has several appendices, and two of them seem to be especially useful. One is Appendix V, "Taxonomic Classification of Marine Organisms," which probably originated as a handout in one of Garrison's classes. Students will find it helpful to have this overview of marine organisms, all in one place, though the list does contain some errors. (Marine amphibians are very few, but to say flatly that there are "no marine species" of amphibians isn't right. Neither is it right to say that the gulls are the only marine birds in the order Charadriiformes, or that pelicans are the only marine members of the Pelicaniformes.)

Appendix VI, "Working in Marine Science," should be photocopied in bulk by all marine scientists, so that it can be used as a handout in social situations. Here is why I make that suggestion. Whenever I disclose that I am a marine biologist -- say, during a civic meeting or at a dinner party -- I am approached by a well-meaning adult who says something like this: "I have a [daughter, son, nephew, niece] who loves to [surf, fish, sail] and wants to become a scientist and study things in the ocean. What should [he, she] be doing to get ready?" I am not alone in this. All the marine scientists whom I know have to handle similar questions, and Garrison's Appendix VI gives the right answers in a kindly, cogent way: study math (because "Math is the key to further progress in any area of marine science"); learn to utilize computers ("preferably DOS, not Macintosh, by the way"); take basic science courses; get good grades; do volunteer work to "expand your involvement in marine science"; plan on going to graduate school; foster diversity in your interests; and so on.

Essentials of Oceanography is a good book. Read it for enjoyment and information. Teach with it to get good results in your science classroom.

H. Gary Greene is a marine geologist and the director of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (in Moss Landing, California). His research focuses on ocean-bottom cold seeps and the communities of organisms associated with them.

Leighton Taylor, a marine biologist, operates Leighton Taylor & Associates (in St. Helena, California), a company that offers planning and design services to science museums and to other institutions that present science to the public. He also writes extensively about marine subjects. His book Sharks of Hawaii: Their Biology and Cultural Significance was published in 1993 by the University of Hawaii Press.

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