263 THE SEAS 



The costs of equipping and running such a ship are heavy 

 and beyond the means of the private individual. A few 

 fully equipped research vessels are regularly employed by 

 the governments of various countries for routine research 

 in the area of the great sea fisheries (Plate 97) ; occasional 

 expeditions are also sent out to study conditions in the open 

 ocean, financed either by governments or private sub- 

 scription. 



But this is not to say that research cannot be carried 

 out at sea without a large steam vessel. Much information 

 of the most fundamental importance has been gained by 

 working from small sailing or motor driven craft. Many 

 of the basic principles underlying marine biological 

 phenomena have only been discovered by exact and minute 

 study within only a small area of the sea, and to this end 

 a small boat equipped only with the necessary apparatus 

 for some special branch of research is all-sufficient. 



There remains the marine laboratory, accounts of some 

 of which have been given in the first chapter. Their 

 importance in oceanographical research cannot be over- 

 estimated. Much has yet to be done in the way of 

 description of the life-histories of many animals, and the 

 different stages of development have to be carefully drawn 

 in order that they may be recognized when taken in 

 collections by future workers. Under laboratory conditions 

 even the most delicate animals can be reared from the egg 

 and their identification thus becomes certain. Other 

 fundamental problems can be tackled in the laboratory 

 and mention may be made here of one concrete example. 



It has been the aim of marine research workers to get 

 as near a true evaluation of the sea as possible. By 

 counting the planktonic organisms in a given volume of 

 water after centrifuging it was found that there were 

 fourteen organisms in a cubic centimetre of water taken 



