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President Thomas Jefferson signs a bill authorizing the United States Coast Survey
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Charles Wyville Thomson finds sea life at 14,400 feet, previous theories thought that the sea was lifeless below 1,800 feet.
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The U.S. Fisheries Commission steamer Albatross begins operations as the first ship built to serve as an oceanographic research vessel.
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The first marine magnetometer found magnetic striping on the seafloor off the West Coast. The discovery adds a key element to the theory of plate tectonics.
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Sealab I, an underwater habitat, is lowered off the coast of California.
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The Navy develops the Cable-controlled Underwater Recovery Vehicle (CURV).
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Sealab 2 is deployed off the coast of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. It is twice the size of Sealab 1 and is designed to house ten men at a depth of 200 feet for 30 days.
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The Coastal Zone Color Scanner showed biological oceanographers the patterns, variability, complexity, and coherence of ocean biology for the first time.
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TOPEX/Poseidon satellite begins mapping the surface of the sea.
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An international scientific team announces a plan that aims to map the entire floor of the Earth's oceans by 2030, using over a dozen tracking ships outfitted with advanced multibeam bathymetry technology.
