Oceanography, as the study of the sea in all its aspects, is the meeting ground of various sciences that deal with the sea. In the special physical, chemical, and biological fields, oceanography is of very recent development in the Philippines The first scientifically significant study of our waters was made in 1874 and 1875 by the globe-encircling Challenger expedition; the latest is that of the Galathea in 1951. Up to the intensive survey here of the Spencer F. Baird in 1947-49, only three foreign expeditions of similar nature (not including the Japanese-sponsored ones) have visited our shores, namely, the Planet in 1912, the Dana in 1929, and the Snellius in 1929-30. All others have only served in a general way to establish gross features of the ocean bottom and the general distribution of certain physical and chemical properties. Miguel Selga, S. J., former director of the Philippine Weather Bureau, has made a fine chronological compilation of these contributions to the oceanography of the Philippines, starting from Magellan’s historic “first sounding’’ of the Pacific in 1521 up to the beginning of the present century.
Among the most noteworthy expeditions of the sixteenth century that made definite contributions to Philippine hydrographic knowledge, Selga mentions the Nuestra Señora de Buena Experanza (1587) which obtained astronomically determined positions for several places of the Islands, particularly the Pratas Shoal and the Babuyan Islands, and that of the Desire (1588) under Thomas Fuller, who made detailed observation of heights, soundings, latitudes and distances of certain places like Cape Espiritu Santo, Sibuyan Island, Panay, Negros, and Mindanao. In the seventeenth century Hernando de los Rios Coronel, inventor of the astrolabe, sent to Madrid from Manila a map he had drawn of Formosa Island, Luzon, and China, and wrote important sailing directions for the Manila- Nueva Espana (1605) and Acapulco-Manila (1611) routes.
View the PDF Article