DEPARTMENT OF MARINE BIOLOGY. ' 



Alfred G. Mayor, Director. 



In February 1921, Professor E. Newton Harvey returned from an 

 expedition to the island of Banda, Dutch East Indies, whither he had 

 gone to study the chemical and physiological nature of the light 

 emitted from the dorsal region of the head in two species of fish. This 

 light is so brilliant that fishermen use these fishes as a lure when 

 fishing at night. Professor Harvey found that this light is due to the 

 presence of symbiotic bacteria which live in a large gland in the head 

 of the fish, and is not caused by a reaction between luciferin and 

 luciferase. He hoped to discover a source from which large supplies 

 of luciferin and luciferase might be obtained for analysis, but at present 

 the minute Cypridina hilgendorfi of Japan remains the most available 

 known source of these substances among marine animals. 



During the winter chemical analyses of samples of the ancient barrier 

 reef of Tutuila, Samoa, were made for the Director by Professor 

 Alexander H. Phillips. The top of this dead reef is now submerged 

 about 180 feet below present sea-level, thus too deep for the growth 

 of reef corals. Fragments of this old reef which once encircled Tutuila 

 have, however, been tossed up and embedded in the tuff cone of Aunuu 

 Island, which lies off the southeast shore of Tutuila and also in the tuff 

 crater at Fagulua, near Stepps Point, on the south shore of Tutuila. 

 In these specimens the CaCOa ranged from 97.2 to 98.3 per cent and 

 the MgCOa from 1.06 to 1.65, thus being comparable in these respects 

 with reef rock, and showing no evidence of dolomitization, such as was 

 suddenly encountered in the boring at Funafuti at depths below 637 

 feet. This discovery of an ancient dolomitized mass of limestone at 

 depths below 637 feet at Funafuti has, of course, no general bearing, 

 for no attempts have been made to bore into the atolls of groups other 

 than the Ellice Islands, but such borings might easily be made in the 

 Paumotus, Marshall, and Fiji groups, and they might throw much 

 light on the problem of the relationship between modern and ancient 

 coral reefs in the Pacific. Such borings will of course never be made for 

 commercial purposes and must be carried out purely for their scientific 

 interest. 



As was previously reported, on September 9-10, 1919, serious 

 damage was done to the Tortugas laboratory by one of the most 

 severe hurricanes recorded from the Florida region. The wind blew 

 up great masses of sand from the beaches, and this sand was even 

 driven in through the broken panes of glass at the top of the light- 

 house, 158 feet above sea-level; it scoured the paint off our wooden 



^Situated at Tortugas, Florida. 



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