The first voyage to the Mediterranean by Grønland in 1761 can be said to be the world's first oceaographic expedition, as the ship had on board a group of scientists appointed by Frederik V for an expedition to Arabia. The group consisted of linguist Frederik Christian von Haven, surveyor Carsten Niebuhr, naturalist Peter Forsskål, physician Christian Carl Kramer, artist and painter Georg Wilhelm Baurenfeind and assistant Lars Berggren. One of the explicit tasks of the expedition was to study and describe the marine life in the open sea, including finding the cause of mareel, or milky seas. For this purpose the expedition was equipped with nets and scrapers, specifically designed to collect samples fom the open waters and the bottom at great depth.