Trawling on 

 the Mid- 

 Atlantic rid<r< 



I20 DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN 



needle-fish Nerophis, Fierasfer, Arachnactis and Lepas fascicu- 

 laris, as well as young stages of coast -bank forms, stray 

 specimens of which were also met with just off the slope 

 (Stations 92 and 94). 



It will be an interesting task to compare the western and 

 eastern portions of this section, as well as the whole of this 

 northerly section, with the section farther south from the Canary 

 Islands past the Azores to the Gulf Stream. One thing which 

 did strike us particularly was that the boreal plankton — the 

 Gulf Stream forms of the Norwegian Sea — were entirely absent 

 from the southern section (Stations 45-64), but were everywhere 

 present in the northern section. It must be remembered, 

 however, that our pelagic hauls did not reach the very deepest 

 water-layers, which may have the same plankton in both 

 sections, including the boreal species known from the Norwegian 

 Sea. We further noticed in the southern section more of the 

 remarkable "rare" deep-sea fish that have been found in other 

 oceans (the Indian Ocean, for instance) than in the northern 

 section. 



The distribution according to size of individuals belonging 

 to the different larval forms was noteworthy. As previously 

 mentioned, we came across very small larvae — from 4 cm. to 6 cm. 

 long — of the common eel to the south and west of the Azores ; 

 on the northern section also we found larvse of the eel, but 

 they were all full-grown leptocephali. This distribution does not 

 seem to be specially characteristic of the eel, for on the southern 

 section we came across many small larvse and eggs belonging 

 to other forms, none of which were met with farther north. 

 Future investigations will doubtless make all this clear, and 

 may lead to valuable discoveries. 



The accident to our trawl on the Azores bank, already 

 mentioned, prevented us from trawling in very deep water, but 

 for all that we were able to carry out two successful trawlings at 

 considerable depths. The first was at Station 88, on the longi- 

 tudinal ridge north of the Azores, where we shot our trawl in 

 3120 metres of water. There were numbers of echinoderms of 

 all kinds (starfish, sand-stars, sea-urchins, and holothurians), as 

 well as a score of bottom-fish (Macrurits, Synaphobrancktis, 

 Bathysaurus). The haul was extremely interesting, as it gave 

 a fresh proof of the abundance of animal life as far down as 

 3000 metres — not in this case on a continental slope, but out on 

 a ridge in the middle of the ocean. Off the coast of Ireland we 

 succeeded in trawling at 1000 fathoms (1797 metres, Station 95), 



