As early as ancient times, people had the need to draw ocean maps when fishing and sailing at sea. In BC 1 century, ancient Greek scholars were able to draw maps representing the oceans. In the 3rd century A.D., during the Wei and Jin Dynasties in China, there was already a content about the method of measuring the distance and height of islands in the Book of Islands Calculation written by Liu Hui. 1 1 19 "Zhou Pingke Tan" written by Zhu in the Song Dynasty in China records: "A boat master knows geography, watches the stars at night, watches the sun by day, watches a compass or a ten-foot rope hook in the dark, and learns what he has learned." It shows that there were methods of celestial positioning and mud exploration to infer the ship's position.

The earliest existing chart directly serving maritime activities is the "Portland" (nautical bearing) chart in the Mediterranean region made around 1300. This kind of map is drawn with compass bearing lines centered on several points. /kloc-In the middle of the 5th century, Zheng He, a navigator from China, went to Africa, made some bathymetry and sediment detection along the way, and compiled a nautical atlas (see Zheng He's nautical chart). The navigation and exploration activities in 15 and 16 centuries greatly promoted the development of marine surveying and mapping. 1504, Portugal used the method of point-by-point annotation to express the water depth when compiling charts, which was the beginning of the basic method of expressing seabed topography by modern charts. 1569 G. Mercator used isometric cylindrical projection to compile charts. This method has been adopted by many countries so far. /kloc-after the 0/7th century, the scope of marine surveying and mapping is expanding day by day, and the contents of charts are increasing day by day. /kloc-in the 0/8th century, many European countries set up hydrographic institutions one after another, and began to make systematic hydrographic surveys of their coastal waters, and compiled a series of charts. During this period, charts showing seabed topography with isobath lines also appeared. /kloc-in the 0/9th century, marine surveying and mapping developed from coastal areas to oceans, and the continuous increase of marine survey data provided conditions for compiling the world ocean bathymetric map. 1899 The Seventh International Geographical Congress held in Berlin decided to publish the Marine Topographic Map, and the first edition was published in 1903. In the 1920s, echo sounder was used to measure water depth, which greatly improved the working efficiency. 192 1 After the establishment of the International Hydrographic Bureau, it carried out academic exchange activities, revised marine topographic maps and published international nautical charts successively, which promoted international cooperation. Since the 1940s, aerial photography technology has been applied to marine surveying and mapping. Since 1950s, great progress has been made in the application of new technologies and the expansion of research contents in marine surveying and mapping. In the aspect of sounding, in addition to single-beam echo sounder, side-scan sonar and multi-beam sounding system are also used, and ocean remote sensing sounding has also achieved initial results. Positioning means have developed from optical instruments to widely used electronic positioning instruments. The positioning accuracy is improved from several kilometers and hundreds of meters to tens of meters and several meters. Electronic computers have been used to process measurement data. Since 1970s, major coastal countries have systematically used space technology to carry out marine geodesy and various marine physical fields (such as marine magnetic survey). In particular, the satellite altimetry technology is used to detect and study the ocean geoid, gravity anomaly, ocean circulation and tide in detail. In the process of chart drawing, automatic coordinate positioning, electronic color separation scanning, xerography and computer-aided drawing have been widely used. The marine survey has developed from measuring navigation elements to measuring the information of various thematic elements and establishing all the information of seabed terrain model. The large-scale comprehensive survey ship built for this purpose can obtain data of water depth, sediment, gravity, magnetism, hydrology and meteorology at the same time. Integrated automatic measuring equipment has also been developed. For example, in 1978, the 960 seabed mapping system developed by the United States can collect high-resolution sounding data, identify underwater obstacles such as sunken ships and falling planes, as well as sediment and shallow profile data, and can simultaneously carry out seabed mapping, water depth measurement and shallow profile measurement. In addition to improving the contents of ordinary charts, the compilation of charts also includes various special charts (such as Roland charts and Decca charts), seabed topographic maps, various marine thematic maps (such as seabed sediment maps, marine gravity maps, marine magnetic maps and marine hydrological maps) and various marine atlas.