Measuring salinity: ICES link to the scientific community and developing world

The founding meetings of ICES in 1899 and 1901 witnessed the development of the accurate method of salinity determination by Knudsen and his Copenhagen group. Their universally accepted definition of salinity and how to measure it continued unchallenged through the first half of the 20th century. This achievement opened the way for ICES cooperation, in different forms, with the international scientific community. The issue of Mediterranean standard seawater occupied the meetings of the Mediterranean Commission (ICSEM) and generated scientific exchange among the scientists of the two organizations, but was not a formal issue between them. Bilateral relations developed between ICES and IAPO (now IAPSO), thanks to Martin Knudsen (1871-1949). the key figure in both organizations. IAPO supervised the development of Primary Standard Seawater, 1937, and eventually assumed responsibility for the Standard Seawater Service in 1948. The Joint Panel on Oceanographic Tables and Standards (JPOTS) was established in 1962 through an ICES initiative and the drive of Roland Cox (1923-1967). It remained, for three decades, the most active forum for cooperation between ICES, UNESCO, SCOR, and IAPSO, the sponsoring organizations which finally endorsed, with IOC, the two major achievements of JPOTS: the Practical Salinity Scale, 1978, and the International Equation of State of Seawater, 1980. The shipment of standard seawater in the early decades from Copenhagen and Oslo made ICES a familiar name in oceanographic laboratories all over the world, including developing countries, where, for generations, students of oceanography regarded ICES as their link to the scientific world and an assurance of the universality of their chosen discipline.