haul that was heavy to the point of snapping. We fondly expected a haul 

 of hauls, but found that we had picked up a small ship's anchor. 



One interesting thing about the bottom is that there seem to be 

 definite colonies of rich material, and these colonies or spots have always 

 been a puzzle to us. For example, we had one spot ofif Rocky Point in 

 about 85 fathoms; this was not really deep but contained a fauna that was 

 almost unbelievably rich. I will not try to list any of the species here but 

 suffice it to say that when we did hit this spot we invariably had a haul 

 of many of the rarest as well as some of the most beautiful shells from this 

 coast. But this spot was so small that we would drift off it in the time it 

 took to bring up the dredge. We carried our charts and sextant and took 

 the most careful shots time after time. One would think that by using a 

 sextant with at least 3 shots we could get back in position without difficulty. 

 However, our batting average at best was never as high as one out of five 

 hauls. It should be explained that the bottom on all sides of this spot was 

 composed of ooze and that the spot was certainly no larger than perhaps 

 100 yards in diameter. 



I am inclined to think that in order to do deep water work eflfectively 

 it is necessary to work in the same locality long enough to get to know the 

 bottom. We had all of the charts we could buy but finally almost made 

 our own. 



In the way of tackle we worked for years trying to perfect something 

 that would work well on bottom composed of pinnacles of rock. Very little 

 work has ever been done on such bottom for the simple reason that it is 

 almost suicide for the dredge to get into them, and a trawl is out of the 

 question since it would be torn to pieces almost instantly. The best thing 

 we ever worked out for use here was a circular piece of steel more or less 

 of the bands on a small wine barrel, probably 18 inches in diameter. 

 To this we attached 3 lines for the bridle, leaving long lines to the bit, and 

 on the steel circle we attached a short net well protected with heavy canvas, 

 of course leaving the end of the canvas open. The incentive of so much 

 work was that these rocky pinnacles were covered with brachiopods and 

 some species of rock shells that simply were not to be had in any other way. 



It might be mentioned that right here on these pinnacles we did at 

 times use a tangle with some success. A tangle is not to be recommended 

 as a piece of gear with which to collect shells ordinarily but here we would 

 find that we were bringing up quite a lot of several of the rare deep-water 

 Boreotrophons that were not taken in our open dredging. Of course, the 

 students of echinoderms would have been delighted because the tangle 

 would come up loaded with really beautiful living crinoids and other rarities 

 in this group. In fact, deep-water sea urchins in great demand by students 

 of this group are a first-class nuisance to shell collectors because the tangle 

 will get loaded down with these things and it would take hours to pick 

 them all out of it. For our tangle we used a piece of steel pipe and attached 

 to it all along unravelled manila rope, rtuining back about 20 feet. 



(28) 



