nr Ip a PT 7 Md Lui 
1906. No. 3: AMUNDSEN’S OCEANOGRAPHIC OBSERVATIONS IN 1901. 39 
On a previous occasion! it was pointed out how the water-masses 
may be changed entirely in a very short time in this shallow sea, and 
how rapidly the very cold bottom-water may disappear under certain 
circumstances. At the „Fram’s” Station 5 (op. cz.) in the Pechora Bay, 
on July 27 1893, there was a more than 53 metres thick bottom-layer 
of winter water with temperature below —1°5° C. and salinity about 
345 %0?. But three weeks later Knipowitsch found no trace of it, 16 
miles to the southeast. 
The cold and heavy Bottom-Water on the Coastal Shelf 
of Novaya Zemlya. 
Nearly all sections across the Barents Sea, which reach the west 
coast of Novaya Zemlya, show very peculiar conditions over the shelf, 
outside this coast at depths between 120 and 150 metres. Over the 
floor of this shelf and in its depressions near the coast, there is generally, 
even in the autumn, a bottom-layer of water which has very low tempe- 
ratures and unusually high salinities, frequently above 3500. This 
bottom-water, which is much heavier than the water on the slope outside 
the shelf (see Figs. 2 and 3, pp. 26, 27), forms a layer which is thicker 
and with higher salinities early in the summer and spring than later in 
the season. It is obvious that this water, which is formed by cooling 
at the surface during the winter, owes its high salinity to the formation 
of ice on the surface, as is mentioned above (p. 31). 
Amundsen’s surface observations in the most eastern part of his 
route, over the coastal shelf (see Pl. I), show very clearly how the for- 
mation of ice appreciably increases the salinity of the sea surface and 
consequently also that of the underlying strata. 
On May 31, 1900, Mr. Alf Wollebæk3 took, from on board the 
*Heimdal” of the Norwegian Navy, a vertical series of observations on 
the coastal shelf of Novaya Zemlya. Taken so early in the season as 
they were, these observations demonstrate better than any others hitherto, 
the formations of heavy bottom-water, and they will therefore be espe- 
cially mentioned here. The water-samples were stored in soda-water- 
å 
Oceanogr. of N. P. Basin, p. 262. 
This was obviously not a local occurrence, for at Stat. 6 on the following day, nearly 
60 miles further to the east-south-east in the Pechora Bay, there were found similar 
low temperatures between 5 metres and the bottom at 22 metres. 
Mr. Alf Wollebæk was sent out by Dr. Johan Hjort, leader of the Norwegian 
Fishery- and Marine-Innestigations, to take oceanographic observations during the cruise 
of the "Heimdal” in the Arctic Sea, in May 1900. 
(21 
