Section V, 1919 [15] Trans. R.S.C. 



A Study of Marine Bacteria, Straits of Georgia, B.C. 



By Cyril Berkeley, Vancouver, B.C., late Agricultural Bacteriologist 

 to the Government of India 



Presented by Professor E. E. Prince, F. R.S.C. 



(Read May Meeting 1919.) 



It is now well recognised that bacteria play an indispensable 

 part in maintaining the circulation of the elements necessary for the 

 maintenance of life on the land portions of the earth's surface and the 

 study of the individual species participating and their particular 

 activities is the chief concern of agricultural bacteriology. Com- 

 paratively little attention seems to have been given to the allied 

 problem under the conditions which exist in the open sea. It is gener- 

 ally conceded that the decay of marine animals and plants is brought 

 about in some measure by bacterial agency, that the complex com- 

 pounds of which they are composed are broken down to simpler forms 

 and that these simpler compounds are in due course assimilated by the 

 living agencies and so returned to the cycle ; but this is largely argued 

 by analogy with the conditions known to exist on land and very little 

 knowledge appears to exist as to the particular bacteria participating 

 in the processes or the nature of the chemical change brought about. 

 Involving as it does an enormous field of study not only in bacteriology 

 and chemistry, but also in plant and animal physiology under con- 

 ditions which are often themselves little known this is not surprising, 

 but the fascination of investigation on the lines indicated is as obvious 

 as are its difficulties. 



In 1914, the late G. H. Drew published^ a valuable and suggestive 

 paper in which he established the connection between the greater 

 development of the plankton in temperate than in tropical seas with 

 the greater activity of denitrifying bacteria in the latter case. He 

 showed that nitrogenous compounds which have been broken down 

 to the condition of nitrate are very speedily reduced to elementary 

 nitrogen by bacterial agency in tropical seas. The nitrogen is thus 

 eliminated from the cycle of marine life unless there be other organisms 

 present in the open sea, as there are on land, which are capable of 



1 " On the Precipitation of Calcium Carbonate in the Sea by Marine Bacteria, 

 and on the Action of Denitrifying Bacteria in Tropical and Temperate Seas," G. 

 H. Drew — "Papers from the Tortugas Laboratory of the Carnegie Institute of 

 Washington," Vol. V, 1914. 



Sec. V, Sig. 2 



