After the age of exploration, and Europe's violent colonisation of much of the globe, attention started turning to what lay under the surface of the sea. These early attempts were sporadic, however, and only ever explored a tiny fraction of the oceans at a time. It was only in the 1760s that the first dedicated oceanographic mission – a Danish expedition to the seas around Egypt the Arabian Peninsula – took place, gathering specimens using nets and simple dredging equipment.
