Gilfillan Auditorium Oceanography is a discipline defined more by the geographic location it studies than by a common set of intellectual questions.
Many disciplines contribute to the on-going project of learning about the oceans.
Some alliances, such as between chemical and physical oceanography, have proven easier to maintain than others. Few have been as uneasy as that between physics and biology. Yet by several measures things have recently changed, such as the 1992 founding of the journal Fisheries Oceanography. I argue that ICES responded to the intersection of intellectual questions and societal needs in this case the drive to understand why fish stocks, and therefore fisheries, fluctuate - as it tried to promote effective cooperation between physical oceanographers and fisheries biologists. Helen M. Rozwadowski received her doctorate in the history of science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1996.