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



Kara Sea was surveyed by Nansen's famous Fram, in 1900 by Toll's Russian 

 expedition in the Zarya, in 1907 by the expedition of the Duke of Orleans in 

 the Belgica and in 1918 by R. Amundsen in the Mod. All these expeditions 

 have contributed to the study of the Kara Sea fauna. 



Second period 



A comprehensive study of the Kara Sea and its fauna was begun as recently as 

 1921 by the expedition of the Oceanographic Institute in the Malygin and 

 by that of the Hydrographic Directorate in the Taimyr. In subsequent years 

 a number of Soviet expeditions of the Arctic Institute and the Committee 

 of the Northern Sea Route cruised in the Kara Sea. Among them the voyages 

 of the Sedov (1929, 1930 and 1934), Lomonosov (1931), Rusanov (1931 and 

 1932) and others, and particularly the expeditions of the Sadko (1935, 1936 

 and 1 937) which sailed to the north of the Kara Sea far into the Arctic basin 

 and which was the first to haul bottom fauna from depths of almost 4,000 m, 

 are of especial interest. The results of the expedition of the trawler Maxim 

 Gorky in 1945 were of importance. During the Soviet period the number of 

 expeditions working in the Kara Sea has been more than doubled in com- 

 parison with those of all previous years. Earlier opinions on the Kara Sea 

 population have been radically altered by the Soviet expeditions of the last 

 twenty-five years. Formerly it was supposed that the Kara Sea flora and fauna 

 were qualitatively extremely poor; this was due to the expeditions sailing 

 only through the southern parts of the Sea, where the fauna is in fact very poor 

 in number and variety. 



The Soviet expeditions, which covered the whole Sea up to its entrance into 

 the open parts of the Arctic basin, have shown that the Kara Sea fauna is 

 almost as varied as that of the Barents sea and much more so than the fauna 

 of any other Siberian sea. 



III. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY, HYDROLOGY AND HYDRO- 

 CHEMISTRY 



Boundaries 



The Kara Sea is bounded on the west by Novaya Zemlya and on the east by 

 Severnaya Zemlya (56° to 105° E longitude); it extends northwards from 68° 

 to about 81° N latitude. 



Bottom topography and size 



A deep trench, with depths down to 200 m in the south and to 600 m in the 

 north, stretches along the coast of Novaya Zemlya. East of this trench the 

 bottom begins to rise to the extensive shallows of the Yamal and Taimyr 

 peninsulas (Fig. 93), with depths of less than 50 m. The area of the Kara Sea is 

 883,000 km 2 , and its volume 104,000 km 3 . Its average depth is 118 m, and its 

 greatest depth 620 m. 



Another deep trench enters the northern part of the Kara Sea from the 

 north to the west of Severnaya Zemlya ; it may be connected with the deep 



