Now, satellites high above Earth are being used to map sea floor topography in unprecedented detail. Sediment samples provide a window into the history of an ocean basin. The remains of marine organisms embedded in them give information on the age of the sediment and what the climate was like when the organisms were living. These data are invaluable in testing computer models of our climate - if the model does a good job of replicating our present conditions and known past conditions, we can have more confidence in its predictions of future climate change. Geological oceanographers are also concerned with the transport of sediment to the oceans and beyond.
Geological oceanographers look at the coastal processes too.
Of major interest to many coastal dwellers is how beaches are augmented or decimated by the movement of sand along the shoreline. Antarctic Oceanographers Oceanographers working in the Southern Ocean do many of the same sorts of things as do oceanographers working elsewhere. And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald. From Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner.