18 EIGHTH PACIFIC SCIENCE CONGRESS 



Monthly surveys of selected areas have been made throughout a 

 year or more to determine the cycles of oceanographic conditions and 

 their relation to wind, weather, and season. Daily observations of sea 

 water temperature and salinity are made at three shore stations. Water 

 and air temperatures are collected by ocean shipping. 



SOUTH AMERICA 



For the vast oceanic areas in the eastern Pacific, off the coasts of 

 South and Central America, organized programs of research have been 

 exceedingly limited. However, in the past several years the Food and 

 Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has done much to ini- 

 tiate and stimulate investigations in oceanography and particularly in 

 fisheries. 



The first part of an atlas of the coastal current of Peru and a series 

 of monthly maps of the Peruvian littoral with indications of the average 

 sea-surface temperature, air temperature, barometric pressure, wind direc- 

 tion and force for the years 1946 to 1951, have just been published. The 

 Guano Company has installed a central department of oceanography and 

 ichthyology in their main office in Lima, from which three biological 

 stations are administered. One station deals with the behaviour of 

 oceanic birds, another is concerned primarily with plankton studies and 

 the third with the biology of the anchovy. The Peruvian Navy as well 

 as the Guano Company has cooperated with recent oceanographic expe- 

 ditions in the eastern Pacific operated by the Scripps Institution of 

 Oceanography and by Yale University. Educational work in Oceanog- 

 raphy is just beginning. The Geographic Institute of the University 

 of San Marcos recently gave a series of lectures on oceanography. The 

 attendance in these lectures has been primarily graduates of the univer- 

 sity who are teachers in the Peruvian public schools. 



Pure oceanographic research has not been conducted to any extent 

 by Chilean investigators, the tendency being to study the sea as the 

 habitat of organisms of commercial value. However, considerable basic 

 data have been collected by the Chilean Navy and by merchant ships. 

 Two biological stations, one operated by the University of Chile at 

 Montemar and the other by the University of Concepcion in south cen- 

 tral Chile, give promise of undertaking oceanographic research in the 

 immediate future, due to the activities of representatives of the Food 

 and Agriculture Organization and the Chilean Navy. 



The Food and Agriculture Organization and the Centre of Scientific 

 Cooperation of UNESCO for Latin America are studying ways and means 

 of organizing an international network of marine laboratories in Latin 

 America, Laboratories on the Pacific coast will stress investigations of 



