THE GKEAT FIBHEEIES 15 



hensive. Perhaps enough has been written to show the men 

 who ' occupy their business in great waters ' — trawlermen and 

 drifter men ahke — that men of science have already unravelled 

 many of the secrets of the sea, and are in a fair way to unravel 

 many more. 



To indicate the immeasurable patience and endurance and 

 self-sacrifice which these labours have involved, a quotation 

 from the log of the Norwegian research vessel Michael Sars, oE 

 Jan Meyen on 16th February 1903, will suffice : ^ ' The whole of 

 the afternoon we were pretty well cased with ice — hull, spars, 

 and standing rigging — and on running suddenly into the middle 

 of an ice floe about nine o'clock that evening we had a hard 

 job to get the ship round against the wind, her sails being so 

 stiff with ice that it was impossible to take them in.' It was 

 practically night all the time and they were short of coal, but 

 the work in hand was carried through, although ' the stations 

 we took up during the severe frosts were the reverse of easy, 

 as the metre-wheels froze up, and we had to keep them warm 

 with thick red-hot iron bars that were brought from the engine- 

 room and held close to the wheel axles.' 



Every Iceland trawlerman knows that that sort of thing is 

 not ' yachting '. Arctic fishing is grim work. And these men 

 had no comfort from hopes of good ' winter markets '. They 

 were just investigating the habits of cod and haddock and 

 coalfish. All honour to them. The Norsemen first show^ed us 

 the w^ay across the surface of the Atlantic before ever the 

 mariner's compass w^as made, and it is fitting that they should 

 lead us in the exploration of its depths. But it behoves us — 

 surely — as our means admit — to follow that lead ? The men 

 and the spirit are ready to hand, but will the ships and the 

 money be forthcoming ? 



In writing of the fishes the writer has used the word ' impor- 

 tant ', and, having done so, is doubtful whether the word has 

 much meaning in connexion with Ocean Kesearch. If this 

 book fails to indicate a conviction that the study of diatomic 

 plants so small as to pass through the meshes of the finest silk 

 net, or of the larvae of such humble animals as the oar-footed 

 copepods, the barnacles, the w^ater fleas, the sandhoppers, and 

 the sea-snails, is every bit as ' important ' as observations on 

 the halibut, or the herring, then it has been written in vain. 



The future of fishery is probably bound up in an accurate 

 knowledge of the needs and dangers of baby fish in the earliest 

 and tenderest stages of their existence, and their world is a world 

 which men can explore only with the aid of the microscope.^ 



^ Hjort, Depths of Ocean, p. 5^. ' See Chapter xxxii. 



