CORAL STUDY IN THE SOUTHERN OCEAN — SQUIRES 459 



and a host of other questions, we may be able to get to such funda- 

 mentals as the relationship between age and calcium-carbonate deposi- 

 tion. All of these problems bear upon the entire animal kingdom and 

 the lessons learned here may be applied elsewhere. 



Having considered the whys of the Southern Ocean coral situation, 

 it may be well to discuss the hows. With the exception of a few New 

 Zealand and Patagonian shallow-water corals, most of the species being 

 studied occur on the continental shelves in water depths of 40 meters 

 or more. Some are found in depths of 6,000 meters — the deepest 

 known occurrences of corals. Because of these depths, much of the 

 work is done from oceanographic ships. Collections are made with 

 many different types of equipment dragged on cables from the ships. 

 Bottom trawls, rock dredges, grab samplers, etc., are all used in special 

 instances to obtain special samples, and all yield corals. At present 

 we are not concerned with some of the finer problems such as popula- 

 tion density, and the teclmiques requiring quantitative sampling, for 

 we are still obtaining on a regional basis such basic knowledge as 

 which corals are found where. For this sort of data, cruder instru- 

 ments are used. However, bottom photography utilizing any of the 

 many cameras which have been developed for this purpose has shown 

 itself to be an excellent method of obtaining general bottom informa- 

 tion, and considerable detailed information about how corals live and 

 in what numbers. 



Despite the many features of the Southern Ocean which suggest the 

 desirability of a study such as the one outlined, when the work actually 

 begins numerous difficulties are encountered. The Southern Ocean is 

 an area of many moods, most of them belligerent. Much of the area 

 is available only to marine scientists aboard icebreakers, and then for 

 only a limited portion of the year. In much of the remaining area, 

 seas and winds make work unpleasant or impossible for a great deal of 

 the time. It almost seems as if the Southern Ocean is attempting to 

 retain its own, reluctantly parting with information about itself. Yet, 

 only a few months at sea each year will provide more than enough 

 data for several years of laboratory analysis. At our present stage 

 of knowledge about Southern Ocean corals, each new collection sug- 

 gests new problems, often resulting in reexamination of much of the 

 accumulated data, and opening new attacks upon older imsolved ques- 

 tions. 



