How did the society come to be? There have been several attempts to form a broad oceanography society in the past, and we hope to have a review of these in a future issue. The history of this particular endeavor dates back to 1980. A small group of oceanographers including myself, Ferris Webster, Worth Nowlin, and David Schink discussed the needs of ocean science at that time and decided that we should try to get the existing societies to strengthen their oceanography activities. We were particularly interested in better communication among oceanographers and recognition of achievements in ocean science. We approached both the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) with suggestions for increased attention to oceanography in the existing publications of Eos and the AMS Bulletin, and for more involvement of oceanographers in general in Society activities.

Baker, D.J. 1988. How The Oceanography Society came to be: Its background and its future. Oceanography 1(1):3–6, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.1988.28.

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