Bulking large in the economy of the sea and the food 

 chains of most oceanic fishes are the copepods, small animals 

 much less than an inch long that resemble shrimp. Biologist 

 E. C. Jones of our Laboratory has found that in the central 

 Pacific the occurrence of some members of the copepod 

 family Candaciidae provides clues to the history of the 

 waters in which they are collected. 



Preliminary results suggest that members of the same 

 copepod family can be used in the Indian Ocean in the same 

 way — that certain species are associated with waters of 

 certain temperature and salinity. The distribution of some 

 is associated with water found primarily in the Arabian Sea. 

 that of others with equatorial water or the South Indian 

 Ocean Central Water. 



In another Indian Ocean study, biologist Thomas S. Hida 

 has examined the fishes collected by bottom-trawling in the 

 Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea and is making a study 

 of the polynemids (threadfins) of the Bay of Bengal. Some 

 species of this group are commonly used for food. 



Infernational Studies 



As has been pointed out, the skipjack tuna populations 

 of the eastern Pacific, the Hawaiian area, and Japan may 

 well be linked; certainly Japan and the United States are 

 drawing on a common albacore resource in the North Pacific : 

 they are competing, most unequally, for the fishes of the 

 central Pacific; in the Indian Ocean, Japan takes many more 

 tons of tunas than does India. Fishery problems, when they 

 deal with the creatures of the high seas, are not local. They 

 are at least oceanwide in scale. 



FIGIIRE 18. Water tvpes along long. 70° E. transect in 

 the Indian Ocean, based on teniperulure-salinitv distribu- 

 tion. Arabian Sea Water is verv Harm, highlv saline. Equa- 

 torial water is cooler and les> saline. The waters of the 

 si>uth central Indian Ocean partake 4»f some of the charac- 

 teristics of both the others. 



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34. ( 



35.0 36.( 



SALINITY %o 



37.0 



25 



