ANIMAL LIFE OF THE DEEP SEA BOTTOM 



159 



A large holothurian (Psychropotes), ploughing its way through the deep-sea ooze with its 

 tail appendage raised. About half natural size. 



disheartening experience of any, perhaps, was near New Zealand one 

 day, when the trawl was brought up with a vast haul of many hectolitres 

 and the fastening of the bag came loose, dropping all the contents into 

 the sea again. It had never happened before and it never happened 

 again; but our annoyance was not assuaged by the discovery of some 

 40 different species of animals which had been caught in the meshes of 

 the trawl. We repeated the trawl and succeeded in getting a fine catch; 

 but an opportunity had been irrecoverably lost and two trawls are never 

 quite the same, so we still dream of what we nearly caught in the first one. 

 But let us turn to the opposite extreme and choose a trawl in a region 

 where Fortune smiled on us throughout; when, that is to say, wind, 

 weather, and ocean bed were all ideal. On March 10, 1951, the Galathea 

 lay between Madagascar and Mombasa with a perfectly level plain 

 beneath her; one of the few regions where we can really speak of an 

 extensive deep-sea plain with a depth round about 5,000 metres. To be 

 quite accurate, it was 4,820 metres here. The wind was slight, N. to E., 

 and the current just as slight from the same direction, plus a gentle swell 

 from the north-east. Fishing conditions were perfect, the temperature just 



