SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 339 



(c) Activity 



It has been thought that the activity of fish and other 

 organisms is less at great depths than at the surface, and 

 the bizarre shapes, globular and angular, of many abyssal 

 forms would seem to support this theory. In the many 

 cases where I was able to watch fish and other creatures in 

 motion down to a half mile, there was no hint of slowness, 

 other than that imposed by the absence of stream lines. 

 This was foreshadowed by the fish from our nets, taken 

 from a half to a full mile, which we have kept alive in 

 refrigerators and have filmed. These have swum about, and 

 snapped at my fingers with as much accuracy of balance 

 and swiftness as surface fish. 



(d) Size 



A 12-inch fish is accounted a giant in our trawling oper- 

 ations. The largest we have ever captured was a deep-sea 

 eel more than 4^ feet long. On my dives there was a de- 

 cided increase In general average of the size of fish the 

 farther we descended. 



In the first 1000 feet I saw altogether 16 fish from 6 to 

 18 inches, and 2 (excluding sharks and dolphins) over 24 

 inches. In the second 1000 feet these two figures increased 

 respectively to 54 and 13. I entered the third 1000 feet 

 only three times out of thirty-odd dives and recorded the 

 same sizes as 9 and 5. If these are multiplied by ten, thus 



