Program Minor Graduate Program Oceanography is the study of the marine environment and its interactions with the earth, the biosphere, and the atmosphere. The study is prompted both by the intellectual desire to understand how the oceans move and how life develops in a salty, cold environment, and the need to use wisely the ocean's resources for the benefit of humanity. It is an interdisciplinary science integrating the basic principles of biology, chemistry, geology, physics, geophysics, mathematics, botany, zoology, meteorology, and geography. Applications of high technology to oceanographic instrumentation and vessels, increasingly sophisticated computers, satellite remote sensing, and innovative methodologies are rapidly opening new possibilities for exploration and study.
Emphasis is on investigations of bacteria, phytoplankton, zooplankton, and benthic organisms.
Chemical Oceanography investigates the complex chemistry, distribution and cycling of dissolved substances, nutrients, and gases in seawater, the mechanisms controlling them and their origins and fates. The School of Oceanography, which had its beginnings in 1930, offers courses and conducts basic research in oceanography, the science that examines physical, geological, chemical, and biological processes in the ocean and interactions of the ocean with the earth, the biosphere, and the atmosphere. Because the science of oceanography is interdisciplinary in nature, joint programs are maintained in the areas of astrobiology, atmospheric sciences, biochemistry, environmental chemistry, geochemistry, geophysical fluid dynamics, geophysics, and marine biology and botany with the departments of Applied Mathematics , Astronomy , Atmospheric Sciences , Botany , Chemistry , Genetics , Geological Sciences , Geophysics , Microbiology , and Zoology , and with the other units in the College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences . Among the wide variety of courses open to students are molecular approaches to oceanographic questions, marine microbiology, zooplankton ecology, aquatic organic geochemistry, estuarine circulation and mixing, ocean and climate variation, sedimentary dynamics and history of the ocean, marine science of coastal zone management, and human impacts on the ocean. Summer-quarter instruction is offered both on the main campus and at the Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island.