OCEANOGRAPHICAL AND FISHERIES RESEARCH IN INDIA 



By N, K. Panikkar 



Central Marine Fisheries Research Station 

 Mandapam, South India 



Earlier Work 



Although earher investigations in Indian Seas were conducted by 

 the British Naval Vessels from 1832 to 1862, serious attempts to study 

 Indian waters were commenced only in 1872 with the inauguration of 

 the Indian Marine Survey. The surgeon-naturalists attached to the 

 survey ships were really the pioneers in marine studies of Indian waters. 

 The Marine Survey was placed on a more permanent footing when the 

 survey ship "INVESTIGATOR" was built during 1879 to 1880 and it is 

 of interest to record that some of the apparatus used in this ship for 

 work in Indian waters originally came from the gear used by H.M.S. 

 "Challenger." The interest evinced in deep sea life by the Challenger 

 Expedition was reflected in the special attention given to deep sea 

 organisms of the Indian Ocean. Except for soundings and temperatures, 

 the observations made were largely biological. 



Sewell's Work on "Investigator" 



In place of the "INVESTIGATOR I", a new ship of the same name 

 was built and commissioned in 1908 commencing a new phase in 

 oceanographic work in Indian waters with special reference to the tem- 

 perature and salinity distributions up to a depth of 500 fathoms 

 initiated by Sewell, who joined the ship in 1910. The work of Sewell 

 on "INVESTIGATOR" continued till 1925 with the exception of a break 

 of some years between 1914 and 1921 owing to World War I. Sewell's 

 work brought out the general picture of hydrological features of the 

 ocean. In a series of contributions published by the Asiatic Society of 

 Bengal in 1925-35, the geogiaphy of the Andaman Basin, the nature 

 of the sea bed and of the deep sea deposits of the Andaman Sea and the 

 Bay of Bengal, the maritime meteorology of the Indian Seas, the tempera- 

 ture and salinity of the coastal and deeper waters of the Bay of Bengal 

 and Andaman Sea, the topography of the Laccadive Sea and the coral 

 formations in Indian waters were dealt with by Sewell. Additional 

 oceanographic data were also obtained during this period from the re- 

 sults of the German Deep Sea Expedition "VALDIVIA" (1898-99) and 



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