76 



BIOLOGY OF THE SEAS OF THE U.S.S.R. 



placed the names of Russian explorers in the first rank of explorers of the 

 polar regions. As a result the Barents Sea may be considered one of the best 

 surveyed seas in the world. The research vessel Persei of the State Oceano- 



Fig. 21. Persei, research vessel of State Oceanographic Institute (1923 to 1940). 



graphic Institute (1923 to 1940) (Fig. 21) has played a particularly important 

 role in the exploration of the Barents Sea. 



Continuous research work on the fauna of the Barents Sea is now being 

 carried out by the N. M. Knipovitch Polar Institute of Sea Fisheries and 

 Oceanography in Murmansk (mainly by way of scientific and commercial 

 researches) and by the Murman biological station which was organized in 

 1936 on the Dalne-Zelenetskaya Guba by the Soviet Academy of Sciences. 



II. PHYSICS, GEOGRAPHY, HYDROLOGY, HYDRO- 

 CHEMISTRY AND GEOLOGY 



Boundaries 



The Barents Sea (Fig. 22) is the first of the system of boundary epicontinental 

 bodies of water of the Arctic basin, which we enter in our voyage round 

 northwest Europe. It is a kind of approach to the outposts of the Arctic, 

 which have been conquered by the warm Atlantic waters. The Barents Sea is 

 bounded on the north by the Archipelagoes of Spitsbergen and Franz Joseph 

 Land, to the east by Novaya Zemlya, while to the west a slope towards the 

 great depths of the Greenland Sea serves as a boundary. 



Size 



Within these boundaries the area of the Barents Sea is 1,405,000 km 2 , the 

 average depth of the Sea is 229 m, and its volume is 322,000 km 3 . Depths 

 below 400 m are rare ; they are found in the western and northeastern parts 



