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ANIMAL LIFE OF THE DEEP SEA BOTTOM 



The double sledge- trawl, six 

 metres wide, being lowered 

 into the deep. 



individuals), one species of a gephyrean worm (two individuals), and 

 five species of bristle-worms (about 65 individuals). This was a brilliant 

 start — over 2,000 animals spread over 18 species. 



And our luck held: one trawl after another came up alive with animals. 

 We succeeded in making a whole series of trawls at lesser depths, up to 

 2,500 metres. By means of our echo-soundings we were fortunate in 

 finding, without much difficulty, admirable trawling beds over to the south 

 in the Kermadec Trench, where on the eastern side the transition to 

 shallower water seems to be much steadier than we had previously expe- 

 rienced in the great trenches. 



We made 16 trawls and brought up bottom-dwellers 12 times, the 

 trawl in the remaining four cases failing to reach the bottom. As only 

 two trawls, both successful, were from depths shallower than 4,500 me- 

 tres, the percentage of failures was only 29 for the deepest trawls. This 

 low figure had been previously achieved only by the Swedish Deep-sea Ex- 

 pedition, which in its 14 trawls at depths beyond 4,000 metres had exactly 

 the same percentage. Our annoyance at what we regarded as failures 

 was hardly tempered by the fact that they gave us rare or unknown pela- 

 gic animals, because we should have got them with bottom-dwellers anyway ; 

 the 42 kilometres of wire which went out in vain and was laboriously hauled 

 in again cost time, and that could not be replaced. It takes a cool tem- 

 perament not to be upset when it is reported that the trawl has not 

 been to the bottom when it should have gone down to 8,000 metres, and 

 when the first one yielded 2,000 animals. Still, the aggregate results ex- 



