280 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1959 
below the westward drift known as the South Equatorial Current. It 
transports a billion cubic feet of water per second at 3.5 miles an hour. 
Even this prodigious movement is exceeded by the Pacific Equatorial 
Countercurrent, 200 miles north of the Equator, which carries east- 
ward half again as much—the equivalent of more than 2,000 Missis- 
sippi Rivers! Oceanographers have not yet explained where all this 
water goes when it reaches the American Continent. 
The sources of great water masses must be known in studying the 
general circulation. The ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland, and 
smaller glaciers everywhere, obviously provide substantial amounts 
of water. (Many persons are by now familiar with the statement that 
if the Antarctic ice were to melt completely the oceans would rise some 
hundreds of feet above present levels—luckily, a matter of no immedi- 
ate hazard.) Analysis of the deep waters of the Atlantic shows stale- 
ness and oxygen starvation as compared with 30-year-old observa- 
tions. This suggests a lessening in recent years of cold polar water 
to carry fresh oxygen to the depths, a matter of concern in marine 
biology. Anomalous warm-water masses in the Pacific in recent 
years have been accompanied by unusual fish distribution and by 
apparent effects on climates, but the causes are not yet explained. 
The dynamic motions of the sea surface have had comparable at- 
tention. The U.S. island observatory program employed sensitive 
wave-metering devices and an unusual distribution of standard tide 
gages. Much information was derived leading to the analysis of 
water levels and the identification of short- and long-period waves up 
to several minutes in period, sea surges as much as an hour long, and 
other dynamic effects. Some of the motions may be related to tidal 
and earth-rotational mechanics; others are clearly meteorological in 
origin, with evidences of energy coupling between the water and atmos- 
pheric pressure systems even as high as the stratosphere. Possible 
benefits may be the future prediction of storms and damaging waves. 
Basic information was obtained about the steric sea level, which de- 
pends on total water volume, and we now have a growing idea of the 
changing shape of the sea surface during the period of the IGY. 
Gropings toward that other boundary, the bottom about which so 
little is known, derived important facts of several kinds. Deep 
trenches and a 1,000-mile range of sunken mountains were found in the 
Pacific. The mid-Atlantic ridge was more extensively explored, and 
its geological substructure probed with sound waves from under- 
water explosions—a process termed “seismic exploration.” Large 
Pacific areas were examined minutely with ship-towed magnetometers, 
which found magnetic characteristics of the bottom rocks having 
great significance in the compilation of geologic and tectonic history. 
Tests indicated that the flow of heat energy from the crust into the 
