132 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



men had established the principle clearly laid down, for instance, 

 by Sir John Murray in "The Ocean" and in his larger work, "The 

 Depths of the Ocean," that the amount of animal life per cubic 

 unit of ocean water is least in the tropics and increases gradually 

 as you proceed towards either pole.* This is really a fact of com- 

 mon observation, although the ordinary observer neglects to make 

 the proper deduction. 



The great commercial fisheries of the world are not in the 

 tropics. We get the name sardine but not all the sardines from 

 Sardinia. The well known fisheries are in the north Atlantic, on 

 the Newfoundland banks, in the North Sea and on the coasts of 

 Norway and Iceland. That is where the cod, the herring, the 

 haddock, and the halibut come from. When the ornithologist 

 explains to you why there is guano on a certain part of the coast 

 of Chile, he tells you that the cold waters from the Antarctic bring 

 in the tremendous quantities of marine animals upon which the 

 birds live that deposit the guano. At the marine-biological station 

 at Wood's Hole, Massachusetts, you learn that the polar current 

 sets in to that coast more at certain seasons than at others and 

 that marine life is most abundant when it does. Millions of seals 

 and of walrus live on northern fish and Crustacea and have to be 

 hunted mainly in subarctic and arctic (or antarctic) waters by those 

 who pursue them in ships for their hides, ivory and oil. Indeed, the 

 chemist and marine biologist are both ready to explain that the 

 conditions of rapid chemical change and decay are such in warm 

 waters that an animal or plant that dies is soon resolved into its 

 elements and removed from the domain of food; while if a similar 

 organism dies in cold water its body floats around for a consid- 

 erable time ready to be devoured by other organisms.** This in 

 simple terms is the explanation of why more animal life can sub- 

 sist in cold than in warm ocean water — there is more to eat. 



But here the critic can object that the oceanographers them- 

 selves, such as Sir John Murray or Nansen, while pointing out 

 the tremendous abundance of animal life at the outskirts of the 

 polar ice, assert that it becomes rare when you penetrate far within 

 the ice-covered area. On such a point men like Murray can 

 reason only upon a priori grounds, inference and hearsay; but 

 Nansen can appeal to the testimony of his own drift in the Fram, 



* The Ocean," by Sir John Murray, Home University Library, New York 

 and London, pp. 162-164. 



** See "Fishes of the High Seas," by J. T. Nichols, in The National Ma- 

 rine, July, 1920, pp. 26-34. 



