78 EIGHTH PACIFIC SCIENCE CONGRESS 



consists of three professional officers and two technicians. The observ- 

 atory suffered a severe loss by the death in March, 1953, of Mr. W. 

 M. Jones, M.Sc, (N.Z.) B.A. (Oxon.), Director. In his contribution 

 to the development of physical oceanography in New Zealand, Mr. 

 Jones brought his long experience as a mathematical physicist in other 

 fields of geophysics. 



An Admiralty wave recorder was installed at Greymouth, west coast 

 of South Island, in 1950, and ocean wave records obtained during a 

 three-month period. An examination of these records in conjunction 

 with weather information showed that there was satisfactory agreement 

 between the main features of meteorological situations and the resul- 

 tant wave spectra, and some graphical methods were evolved for eval- 

 uating the quantitative relations. The statistical relationships between 

 the observed sea surface and its spectrum have been studied. Some re- 

 sults have been published by Jessie K. A. Watters (1953, "Distribution 

 of height in ocean waves." A^. Z. /. Sci. Tech. B 34: 408-22), and others 

 will be published in a paper in preparation for the same journal by 

 N. F. Barber, and R. A. Wooding ("Some statistical features of sea 

 waves"). 



The sea surface temperatures obtained from 1949 to 1952 from 

 merchant and naval ships and from surface recording thermographs in- 

 stalled on trans-Tasman and other vessels have been plotted on month- 

 ly charts as the basis for study of the surface hydrology of the south- 

 west Pacific by D. M. Garner (who has submitted a short account of 

 the results to this Congress). 1,600 salinity determinations, by the Do- 

 minion Laboratory (Wellington), are used to supplement the tempera- 

 ture data. 



The hurricane at Suva in January, 1952, produced a microseismic 

 storm on the Milne Shaw seismograph, and the relations of the micro- 

 seisms to the position and intensity of the hurricane have been exam- 

 ined. 

 Geophysics Division, D.S.I.R. 



Mr. J. W. Brodie has undertaken the filing and analysis of sound- 

 ing records received from ships of the Royal New Zealand Navy and 

 from other sources (including Discovery II, H.M.S. Challenger, and 

 H.D.M.S. Galathea). An account of the sea floor west of New Zealand 

 appears in N.Z. J. Sci. Tech. B 33 (5): 373-84, 1952. Contoured bathy- 

 metric charts of Cook Strait, Bay of Plenty, and Wellington Harbour 

 have been compiled and a description of a seamount rising from 1000 

 to 5000 fathoms, west of Waikato Heads, has been prepared. 12,000 

 drift cards have been obtained for release during 1953 in the south- 

 west Pacific to determine current movements. 



