148 HALSTEAD AND SCHALL 



location, is of particular interest to students of poisonous fishes. Although 

 numerous species are known to occur in the West Indies, Red Sea, and 

 in parts of the Pacific, nothing has been published on poisonous fishes in 

 the tropical far eastern Pacific. According to Myers (1940), the fish 

 fauna of the Cocos-Galapagos region is a blend of Panamanian and Indo- 

 Pacific forms, many of the latter found nowhere else in the Americas. 

 As the zoogeography of this area made it reasonable to assume that pois- 

 onous fishes would be present, the basic objective of the expedition was to 

 determine if they did occur in this region, with the hope that the knowl- 

 edge gained thereby would contribure directly to a better understanding 

 of the origin and distribution of toxic fishes in the tropical Pacific. 



The expedition was made possible by the generosity of Mr. Woodrow 

 C. Krieger, president of the Douglas Oil Company of California, and the 

 Office of Naval Research, Department of the Navy. In addition to mak- 

 ing his yacht, the "Observer," available to the scientific party, Mr. 

 Krieger also installed on it special laboratory and refrigeration facilities. 

 Grateful acknowledgement is made for the invaluable contributions of 

 both Mr. Krieger and the Office of Naval Research. The scientific party 

 included Norman C. Bunker, Jeanne M. Bunker, Leonard S. Kuninobu, 

 Donald G. Ollis, and the senior author. We left Newport Bay, Cali- 

 fornia, on 3 December 1952 and went first to Punta Arenas, Costa Rica, 

 then to Cocos Island. The remainder of the trip can be traced on the 

 accompanying map. The expedition ended at Guayaquil, Ecuador, on 

 18 January 1953. The reports on Cocos and La Plata Islands will be 

 published elsewhere. 



FIELD STATIONS 



The Galapagos Islands (Archipielago de Colon), located on the 

 equator 600 miles west of Ecuador, are volcanic in origin, consisting 

 principally of lava, sandstone, and granite. Although Crossland (1927) 

 reported corals growing in the vicinity, Chubb (1933) says there are no 

 coral reefs; and we saw none. The archipelago comprises six principal 

 islands, nine smaller ones, and numerous islets, with a total land area 

 of 2,868 square miles. The weather is surprisingly mild and the trade 

 winds blow with regularity from April to December. The surface tem- 

 perature of the water on the southwest side of Albemarle Island was 

 15.5°C.; on the northeast, 26.6°C. This difference is caused by the cool 

 Peru Current coming from the south along the coasts of Chile and Peru 

 and meeting in the Galapagos area the warmer Equatorial Countercur- 

 rent from the Gulf of Panama. 



