GENERAL INTRODUCTION 13 



" International Council for the Exploration of the Sea." 

 This council is now composed of delegates from Norway, 

 Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Great Britain and 

 Ireland, France, Belgium and Holland. It has as 

 its prime object the improvement of the Fisheries of 

 the North Sea and surrounding waters, for these great 

 fishing areas are international in character. These 

 countries undertake to fit out permanent research vessels 

 and to study definite problems in the various areas of the 

 sea allotted to them. 



Marine Laboratories 



The foundations of the science of oceanography were 

 laid, as we have seen, by the work of the great marine 

 expeditions. But the work that such expeditions can do 

 is necessarily limited, they are indispensable for studies 

 of the fauna and flora of the open sea, of the nature and 

 inhabitants of the bed of the oceans, and of the ocean cur- 

 rents and the nature of the sea in different regions ; but they 

 are not suited, clearly enough, for examinations of the 

 structure and experiments into the functioning of the 

 animals and plants, or for long continued investigations 

 into the seasonal variations in the constitution of the sea 

 water and its microscopical population, work which, as 

 we shall see later, is of the very greatest importance. For 

 these investigations it is essential that we should have 

 laboratories on the sea coast where marine animals and plants 

 can easily be obtained, where they can be kept in aquaria 

 with running or circulating sea water as near natural con- 

 ditions as possible, and where regular samples of sea water 

 can be obtained throughout the year and the variations 

 in its chemical and physical constitution and its contained 

 life accurately determined by expert chemists and biologists. 

 The need for such laboratories has resulted in the founda- 



