the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 13 Feb 2025
A revisiting of early 18th century environmental data to identify Gulf of Lion properties before the industrial era
Abstract. The work "Histoire Physique de la mer", authored by Luigi Ferdinando Marsili (or Marsigli) and published in 1725, is one of the earliest texts detailing observations of the physical, biological, and bathymetric characteristics of the sea, mainly concentrating on the Gulf of Lion in southern France's Mediterranean area. Nonetheless, understanding Marsili's findings is difficult due to the application of non-standard measurement units and the imprecision of georeferencing data. The MACMAP project (A Multidisciplinary Analysis of Climate Change Indicators in the Mediterranean and Polar Regions), which is funded by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), has involved a thorough recalibration of Marsili's observations. This project focused on transforming water weight measurements obtained from different locations in the Gulf of Lion from June 1806 to January 1807 into water density values. The sampling sites were digitized, bathymetric profiles were reconstructed, and tide amplitudes were examined. The main objective is to make this historical data available to compare with current measurements.
Competing interests: Author Giuseppe Manzella is a member of the editorial board of the journal.
Publisher's note: Copernicus Publications remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims made in the text, published maps, institutional affiliations, or any other geographical representation in this preprint. The responsibility to include appropriate place names lies with the authors.- Preprint
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Status: final response (author comments only)
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RC1: 'see attached file.', Paola Malanotte-Rizzoli, 21 Mar 2025
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2025-53/essd-2025-53-RC1-supplement.pdf
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Marina Locritani, 10 Apr 2025
Dear Dr. Malanotte-Rizzoli, the authors express their gratitude for your suggestions and acknowledge the historical significance of the work. This article forms part of a historical dissertation (PhD Thesis) that is nearing completion. The thesis explores the marine research conducted by L. F. Marsili in the Gulf of Lion between 1706 and 1707, which laid the groundwork for Histoire Physique de la Mer (1725). The study examines his methodology, the instruments he utilised, and the impact of the Royal Society and his Italian mentors. The historical context of his discoveries is also analysed, including his mistaken identification of coral polyps as flowers.
The evolution of Marsili's work is then traced, from his initial study on the connection between mountains and the sea, to the publication of the Histoire. The re-editing and summarising of the arguments of the thesis leads to the consideration of the idea of writing a historical paper to honour Marsili's legacy, whilst acknowledging the evolution of oceanographic methodologies over the centuries.
The authors also emphasise the necessity of providing relevance and traceability to the data collected over 300 years ago by Marsili using rudimentary instruments and methodologies. The data contained in the Marsili book and re-analysed in this paper could be used for the study of environmental changes (natural/man-induced), with the awareness of the error that occurs in the measurements, or to compare with other historical data taken in other places.Best regards, the Authors.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-53-AC1
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Marina Locritani, 10 Apr 2025
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RC2: 'Comment on essd-2025-53', Anonymous Referee #2, 12 Apr 2025
This is one of the important papers for historical oceanography and it focuses in the reconstruction of environmental measurements translating them in modern units from literature records. I recommend the publication subject to minor revisions mainly adding better images, more discussion and interpretation of the results, in addition to some nomenclature issues which I suggest should be corrected by the authors before publication.
I have some major remarks:
- I believe it would be nice to have the Marsili’s maps reproduced ( Gulf of Lion map - Pl. I, page 3 and Cassis map - Pl. II, page 4) because the discussion is otherwise very difficult to follow. There is somehow a little confusion between “distance” along the transects and “lengths” discussed. I suggest that instead of “lengths”, “distance along transects” is used.
- Section 4.1 should not be called “Bathymetry: historical map analysis” but “Measurement sections: historical map analysis“. Furthermore several times there is “map” instead of “distance”. In oceanography we do not use the word map to indicate distance on the earth.
- Furthermore why calculate the “mean” distance? The text is reported here: [The mean distances are 2912 ± 6057 m for the Gulf du Lion map and 324 ± 472m for the Cassis map.] What is the oceanographic significance of a mean “section distance”? I suggest to eliminate this.
- Furthermore I believe the authors should conclude in a more precise manner that to have distances matching the present ones you need to consider a different coastline, as shown in Appendix A. This is an important consideration which is not presented adequately.
- Your statement: The minimum possible measurement error has been calculated, yielding results of ±1.23 Kg/m³. Please define how you estimated errors, this is important. Furthermore, why showing Fig. 3 if the amphores were shown already in Fig. 1?
- Throughout the text, even in the conclusions, it is not mentioned that Marsili did his first measurements of density in the Bosphorus, much before the ones in the Gulf of Lion. In addition he used a different reference water, this is in my opinion an important methodological aspect. Please insert somewhere this relevant note and refer to Pinardi et al. (2018) for the discussion on the other reference waters.
Detailed comments
- Please give a DOI for the EMODnet_satellite_coastline_MSL, it cannot be referenced in this way;
- Line 205, the formula was first presented by Pinardi et al. (2018) and it should be referenced;
- From line 270-280: I suggest you do not talk about the history of past projects/efforts to collect the data in the SeaDataNet archive but you just reference the database which has a DOI. This is not a paper on the recent historical database and it should be enough to give its referencing in modern literature.
Everywhere:
Lenght should be changed to length
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-53-RC2
Data sets
Sea Level data reported in Histoire Physique de la mer (1725) of L.F. Marsili and transformed to calculate the M2 tidal amplitude M. Locrtiani, S. Garvani, and G. Manzella https://doi.org/10.13127/histoiremarsili/sealevel
Water density data extrapolated by water weight measurements reported in Histoire Physique de la mer (1725) of L.F. Marsili M. Locritani and S. Garvani https://doi.org/10.13127/histoiremarsili/waterdensity
Bathymetric data extrapolated by profiles reported in Histoire Physique de la mer (1725) of L.F. Marsili M. Locritani, S. Garvani, and G. Tamburello https://progetti.ingv.it/it/progetti-dipartimentali/ambiente/macmap#datasets
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