Paper short abstract:

In the late nineteenth century, many early oceanographers focused on physical oceanography, but Prince Albert I of Monaco instead focused on physical conditions as a precursor to understanding biology. This paper explores this "environmental" approach as an alternative track for early ocean science.

Paper long abstract:

Historians of ocean science have frequently asked why France did not become an important locus of early oceanography, but instead concentrated on marine biology. This question presupposes a “right” way to do oceanography. The late nineteenth century birth of oceanography coincided with the widespread adoption of the term “environment” (“milieu” in French), which Etienne Benson (2020) has traced from earlier French naturalists describing the relationship between organisms and their "surrounding circumstances." This environmental approach to ocean science can be clearly seen in the work of Prince Albert I of Monaco, who was born and educated in France and ruled the neighboring principality.

This paper examines Albert's environmental approach to ocean science, which focused on an iterative examination of the oceans. Beginning in the 1880s, he outfitted a series of ocean-going yachts as research vessels and invited scientists from across Europe to participate in scientific cruises in the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Arctic. He first studied surface currents, then incorporated studies of subsurface, pelagic, and benthic physical conditions, which he explicitly described as background for understanding ocean biology. Albert publicized his efforts broadly, calling on both scientists and governments to participate in international efforts and to establish programs in their own countries. This paper thus considers Albert's environmental approach to oceanography as an alternative origin story, which should be examined alongside other international scientific efforts at the turn of the twentieth century, and posits his influence on both France and the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, formed in 1902.