small fish and crustaceans, and have collected quite a number of new and 

 very rare specimens of each, which are gladly received by the Museum. 



Last, but certainly not the least important, is a jug of fresh water and 

 a substantial lunch. If there are cooking facilities on the boat, have some- 

 thing hot, as food is a great cure for sea-sickness, and nothing upsets the 

 equilibrium as much as dredging. The motion of the boat, the exhaust 

 odors when the boat is backed to facilitate hauling of the dredge, the move- 

 ment of the mass on the dredge board when working it over, and the 

 noxious odors of the assortment of sea life so close to your nose, is all very 

 annoying. 



But, no matter what the inconveniences of mal de mer or aching back, 

 the catch is always well worth the struggle. So join the crowd for more 

 and better dredging. 



DREDGING ALONG THE CALIFORNIA COAST 



By John Q. Burch 

 From Minutes of the Conchological Club of Southern California, No. 82, August, 1948 



Our experience has been to find that the bottom at depths of over 

 200 fathoms is composed of ooze with very rare exceptions. The use of a 

 regulation dredge on such a bottom is always very disappointing because 

 it fills at once and contains a small percentage of life. We found that our 

 mo>t successful gear for deep use was a small beam trawl about 6 feet wide 

 at the mouth and running a net back from it perhaps 18 feet in length 

 with the last 6 feet tapering to a cylindrical net of '/4 ii^ch mesh or smaller. 

 This would fill also even though we had nothing to drag the bottom but 

 the leaded line at the bottom of the net. 



Instead of trying to bring up the entire rig, however, especially when 

 we had it down at times as deep as 3000 feet, we would simply drag it oflF 

 the bottom and run with it a short distance. In this fashion the ooze was 

 washed out and a certain percentage of the living forms dropped down into 

 the smaller mesh at the bottom. Then we would lower it again and not 

 haul up until we had made as many as 8 or 10 drags on the bottom. 



Of course, using the light tackle we would almost necessarily lose the 

 entire trawl occasionally. Bearing this in mind we never tried to make our 

 gear expensive or fancy. We found that by having our local blacksmith 

 make up a dozen at a time we could buy them at reasonable cost and when 

 we lost one we simply went up forward and got another to put out without 

 having to grieve over the loss of one trawl. 



The loss of a trawl was often caused by the fact that we would occa- 

 sionally run into a large number of something such as holothurians or 

 even deep water sea urchins. Obviously, if you fill such a huge net as you 

 have on a trawl with anything at all that must come to the surface as is, 

 the chances are that you will never get it up. And of course, odd things 

 did happen. I recall the time we just barely made it to the surface with a 



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