xii Foreword 



partridge season. One would no more expect him to be " at work " at that time 

 than to find him missing on the day his course began at Harvard. 



Henry Bigelow graduated from Harvard College, cum laude, in 1901. As a 

 graduate student in zoology his doctoral dissertation, prepared under Professor E. L. 

 Mark's guidance, was on the nuclear cycle of Gonionemus murbachi. Although he 

 did not pursue cytological studies further, this was a valued experience, for from 

 Mark he first learned the exacting requirements of scientific work. Students among 

 us will find here the source of the discipline to which Henry Bigelow subjected us 

 to our immediate chagrin but ultimate profit. 



It was inevitable that Henry Bigelow should become a naturaHst of some sort 

 but it was not at all clear during his student days that he would become an oceano- 

 grapher or even a marine biologist. His first publication was on the birds of the 

 northeast coast of Labrador, where he had gone in company with Reginald A. 

 Daly and Merritt L. Fernald on the Brown-Harvard Expedition in the summer 

 before his graduation. A later one was on hybrid ducks. A study of hearing in gold- 

 fish under the guidance of Professor G. H. Parker gave him acquaintance with 

 experimental procedures. The die was cast, however, by the opportunity to accom- 

 pany Alexander Agassiz on the voyage to the Maldive Islands, and, later on expedi- 

 tions to the Eastern Tropical Pacific and to the West Indies. His duty was to care 

 for the medusae and siphonophores collected on these voyages; and thus he gained 

 a first-hand experience and competence in the classical disciplines of taxonomy and 

 zoogeography which occupied the first decades of his mature career. Perhaps more 

 important, he was introduced to the universal problems of oceanography and met 

 first-hand the detailed tasks of scientific research at sea. 



In 1912 the United States' Bureau of Fisheries and the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology jointly undertook a general oceanographic exploration of the Gulf of Maine 

 which continued under Henry Bigelow's direction through 1924 when the field 

 work was terminated. These explorations resulted in the publication of three superb 

 monographs; on the fishes, the plankton, and the hydrography of the Gulf. The 

 preparation of the first of these, on the fishes, was far advanced when interrupted by 

 the untimely death of W. W. Welsh who had given special attention to this phase of 

 the work, and was completed by Bigelow at the request of the Bureau. The others 

 are entirely his own work not only in planning and direction but in the execution at 

 sea, in fair weather and foul, in spite of seasickness and with ships and gear far from 

 adequate. 



It is difficult to appreciate today how primitive were the resources available for 

 this work. Thus during 1912 and 1913 reversing thermometers were accurate only to 

 ± 0.15° C; the shortage of water bottles required repeated casts for all but the 

 shoalest stations. Limited means were, however, more than compensated by the 

 challenge of the unknown. He wrote: 



*' Few hving zoologists have been as fortunate as were we on setting sail on the 

 Grampus from Gloucester on our first oceanographic cruise in the Gulf of Maine on 

 July 9, 1912, for a veritable mare incognitum lay before us, so far as its floating Ufe 

 was concerned, though the bottom fauna can be described as fairly well-known. 

 Not but what an extensive list of pelagic crustaceans, coelenterates and other plank- 

 tonic animals had been recorded thence, but everything was yet to be learned as to 

 what groups or species would prove predominant in the pelagic fauna; their relative 



