Appendix G 



CLASSIFIED RESUME OF ORGANISMS OBSERVED 



by William Beebe and Jocelyn Crane 



IDENTIFICATION: This is the most important and the 

 most responsible phase of the present work. For authen- 

 ticity and accuracy is required undisturbed concentration, 

 dark-adapted vision, a priori famiUarity with the location 

 of the photophores and general appearance of abyssal fish, 

 and the proper resolving of unexpectedly appearing and 

 vanishing individual and colonial lights, in sight only from 

 one to ten seconds. 



It required many dives in 1930 before I could distin- 

 guish between Cyclothones and worms, while constantly 

 recurring, conspicuous groupings of lights defied classifica- 

 tion even as to phylum. Only on the last two deep dives 

 did I realize that what I had taken for occasional, dim, dis- 

 tant fish of small size, as well as the "exploding" of organ- 

 isms against the windows, were, in fact, the sudden emana- 

 tion of luminous matter by shrimps. Pteropods were easy 

 to identify in the beam, and their abundance was expected 

 from the patch of Pteropod Ooze which characterizes this 

 small area about Bermuda. Pyrosoms, medusse, siphono- 

 phores, shrimps, and squids were the more abundant of 

 the larger invertebrates. 



295 



