252 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 2 



shelves. Again there is reason to believe that the question can best 

 be settled by a careful study of bottom deposits. Thus oceanographic 

 institutions, having developed a technique for bringing up deep-sea 

 mud in the course of exploring the oceans, are now realizing more 

 fully the wide geologic importance of this type of work. With 

 proper equipment much can be learned from the ocean bottom which 

 will extend geologic knowledge out beyond the beach line and per- 

 haps open up a sounder theory for the formation of the earth's 

 surface. 



In the same way, but perhaps not to the same extent, meteorologi- 

 cal investigations have been largely confined to the air above the 

 continents. Not onlj^ is there much meteorological research work 

 to be done at sea, but this science is closely bound up with oceanog- 

 raphy. For example, how much influence have fluctuations in the 

 ocean currents on variations in climate and vice versa? From a 

 more technical standpoint, students in dynamic meteorology and dy- 

 namic oceanography now see more clearly how similar is the prin- 

 ciple of the circulation of the atmosphere to that of the ocean. Thus 

 we can expect in the future a closer relationship between the physical 

 oceanographer and other geophysical students, for many of their 

 problems are interrelated. 



On the other hand, the scope and importance of marine biological 

 work has been more generally recognized and in certain lines, for 

 example, fisheries investigations, has developed relatively fast. The 

 many marine laboratories of the world are good evidence that 

 physiologists have realized the importance of studying life in its 

 most natural environment. Hand in hand with the development of 

 marine biology has gone the study of the chemistry of sea water 

 and such questions as the penetration of light below the sea sur- 

 face and its influence on the life in the upper water layers. 



Thus at the present time, oceanography has passed the stage of 

 a science in which the collection and tabulation of facts is considered 

 the main aim, and it is now evident that much productive research 

 of wide interest can be carried out at sea. The reader perhaps now 

 realizes that an oceanographic institution must have on its staff 

 men of wide training and experience in science as well as the 

 specialists in the more restricted phases of oceanography. 



The investigation of the ocean naturally divides itself into deep- 

 water problems and shallow-water problems. The well-known fact 

 that most continental land masses are surrounded by a broad, rela- 

 tively shallow shelf of water less than 100 fathoms deep and that 

 the ocean basins are uniformly twenty or thirty times as deep, 

 serves to emphasize this distinction. Investigations along the coast 

 and even out as far as the edge of the continental shelf can be 



