THE BARENTS SEA 73 



I. HISTORY OF EXPLORATION 



The first period 



The first observations on the fauna of the Barents and White Seas, mainly on 

 fish and marine mammals, were collected by the Russian inhabitants of the 

 White Sea coast and by the Novgorod merchants, beginning in the twelfth 

 century. Sea fisheries existed here in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 

 The first data on the Barents Sea fauna to appear in the literature were given 



Fig. 18. Professor N. M. Knipovitch. 



by the academician K. Baer, after his famous voyage to Novaya Zemlya in 

 1837. He collected about 70 species of various animals from those shores. 



The fauna of the Murman coast was first studied during the voyages of the 

 St Petersburg zoologist F. Jarzhinsky (1869-70), S. Herzenstein (1880-84), 

 Grigoriev (1887) and others. 



In the open parts of the Barents Sea and in its northern parts zoological 

 data were collected in the last century by the expeditions of Peyr and Vaiprecht 

 (1872-74), Baron E. Nordenskjold (1875-76 and 1878-79) and others. 



